Why flashcards are the best study tool

Throughout centuries, the popularity of flashcards has seen nothing but growth 📈. This growth alone is a testament to the benefits that flashcards add to our study life. In the following article, we embark on a journey into the world of flashcards — you will have a deeper look into their rich history, the scientific evidence that backs them, and the myriad of ways that they can enrich your study routine! 🎉

The history of flashcards

The roots of flashcards can be traced back to ancient China, where scholars used small, portable tablets to memorize and recite important texts. In ancient Greece and Rome, students employed small wooden or paper tablets known as "tabulae" to aid in memorization of key facts and figures. Fast forward to 1805, the Quakers used them to teach students how to write English. And in the 20th century, the dawn of computers and technology has led to yet another boom and transformation in flashcard usage.  We truly believe that flashcards are one of the most efficient ways to study, and put information into our long term memory. 📚🧠

Reasons why flashcards are great for studying

1. Active recall 📖 : This is a powerful learning technique where instead of passively reviewing study material, you actively push your brain to remember information. Students often spend a lot of their time studying a piece of information again and again, yet not memorizing it because they spend all their time blankly staring at their notes. When you see a flashcard question, you have to actively try to remember the answer to the question. This process alone helps your brain memorize a piece of information in a much more efficient way by strengthening memory retention!
2. Spaced repetition 📚 : Flashcards, especially ones on applications, are often used in conjunction with spaced repetition, which optimizes the timing of reviewing material based on how well you know each flashcard. Spaced repetition algorithms schedule flashcards for review based on your knowldge, making sure that you revisit information at optimal times to reinforce memory. This way, you don't waste time on material you already know well!
3. Efficiency 💪 : Do you ever look at a huge pdf of all the information you have to learn for the final and feel overwhelmed? If only you could study it all in bite-sized chunks! This is where flashcards come in -- you can make your own flashcards in a way that they contain the exact amount of information that you want to learn at a time. 📚 Key concepts, vocabulary, formulas, or any other information you need to learn? You can make flashcards centered around these, allowing you to maximize your productivity sessions.
4. Immediate feedback on your knowledge 👀 : Flashcards provide immediate feedback on your responses, allowing you to assess your understanding and identify areas that require further review. This instant feedback loop helps you gauge your progress, track your learning goals, and adapt your study strategies accordingly to focus on areas of weakness. 🎉

The Dual Coding Theory: to help make flashcards even more effective

This theory states that information is more effectively encoded and retrieved when it is represented in both verbal and visual formats. By including images, diagrams, or other visual cues on flashcards along with text-based information, learners can enhance their understanding and memory of the material. If this is incorporated into your flashcard studying, it would make your study process even more effective!

I struggled with making flashcards until I discovered… Voovo 🤩

Throughout my medical school (and, high school) journey, I've always known the power of flashcards. When I had flashcards ready, it was always effortless to study for the exam — I could study on bus rides, at home on the couch, and anywhere I want. Despite this, I often found myself cramming large volumes of text right before exams, wishing I had flashcards. This is because the process of making flashcards can be quite long, to write down each individual question and answer repetitively until all the questions are done can be exhausting. 😭 Even though digital flashcard apps helped speed up the process of making flashcards a bit, it was still a tedious process!

This all changed when I discovered Voovo, which has made an incredibly positive impact on my stress levels prior to exams. With Voovo, you can generate automatic AI flashcards from long text that you can insert into the app! 📚 This alone is an amazing feature. On top of this, you can also insert a complicated diagram into the app and have up to 300 flashcards (depending on how many labels there are) generated in less than a minute! 🤩

In addition, you can use Voovo in split screen with any of your other study resources. This allows for you to…

1. Drag and drop pictures into Voovo from other apps
2. Make voice flashcards while reading out loud from your notes that are in split screen.
3. Type out flashcards from your textbook PDF that is opened in split screen, this eliminates the need to change between apps for each individual flashcard… making your flashcard making process seamless! 📖

I am sure a lot of you, just like me, have wanted to incorporate flashcard learning into your study routine but have found it challenging due to how time consuming they are to make. This is why I am so happy that Voovo was created. 😍 Voovo’s goal is to make your study life as easy, fast, and fun as possible, because you should not be spending hours and hours reading a text over and over again!

Different types of flashcards you can make in Voovo

As a result, you don’t have to worry about switching between flashcard apps so that you can have all the types of flashcards you need! We got you covered. 😍

• Text cards — basic question and answer cards, because we all need this.
• Language flashcards — in a flashcard deck, you can select a default language you would like for the “answer”. Then, when you enter a keyword for the “question” side of the flashcard, Voovo will automatically have the translation for the other side of the card!
• Diagram flashcards — labelled diagrams, with the labels as keywords that are to be memorized. Voovo can generate hundreds of flashcards from a single diagram (if it is complicated enough!) within minutes, simply by you uploading or dropping the picture into the app.
• Picture flashcards — pictures can be memory triggers or things that need to be memorized.
• Voice cards — make flashcards out of what you say, speaking is faster than typing and sometimes you might be too tired to type!
• Fill in the blank flashcards — this is ideal for memorizing definitions and terms.

Unlock your learning potential with Voovo: Effortless flashcards, powerful results

I hope that this was a helpful article and that it inspired you to start studying with flashcards more! When did you first start using flashcards? Do you have any tips or hacks for the other fellow students reading this? If so… leave a comment! We as team Voovo love to make blog posts about studying tips/hacks, our day to day study life, and to keep you updated on all the updates and future of Voovo 👏