Really wonderful, thanks! Once the final version of your thesis is published, do you mind us putting a link to it on our website?
Peter On Saturday 25 April 2009 03:41:09 am Bill Price (formerly Notyourbroom) wrote: > Hello, > > As my first attempt at an experiment, I examined the use of Mnemosyne > in the context of a Mandarin Chinese course. I had two groups, one of > which used the off-the-shelf version of Mnemosyne and one of which > used modified version that had no scheduling algorithm. (In other > words, the second program always scheduled cards for review the next > day, regardless of user input, so those users would activate just one > or two sub-decks to study each day, depending on what they felt the > greatest need to study.) > > Because it was conducted in the context of an academic course and > lasted for three full weeks, the experiment was difficult to control > to any acceptable level of rigor, and the results are essentially > confounded because so many factors (number of cards studied per day, > number of cards studied in total, specific material studied, etc) > varied from person to person and between the two groups. The > differences between the two groups are still quite striking, though. > > Check out this box plot: > > http://tinyurl.com/cydnu4 > > It looks to me as though some folks were predisposed to score at or > near ceiling level regardless of the intervention (as would be > expected from a pool of subjects recruited from a class essentially to > do extra coursework), and that this kept the means of the groups from > separating. However, the large discrepancy of variance between the > groups suggests that the spaced repetition intervention is boosting > the scores of low performers—for whatever reason, be it the spacing > effect or else a simple cultivation of good daily studying habits. > > To quote from my introduction, > > "This thesis argues that the spaced repetition intervention resulted > in a significant increase in evaluation scores and that the intuitive > repetition intervention did not; that the spaced repetition > intervention was in particular of better help to struggling > individuals than the intuitive repetition intervention was; and that > the spaced repetition intervention appeared to promote a distribution > of scores in which subjects clustered closely in the higher score > range, whereas the intuitive repetition intervention resulted in a > wide distribution of scores with high intra-group variance. While the > differences between the two intervention groups are clear, the present > study was unable to determine which specific factor or factors > contributed the most to the success of the spaced repetition group." > > I finished the first draft of my full manuscript today: > > http://tinyurl.com/cqfpjz > > It will need further revisions and copy-editing (see if you can find > the error in the abstract!), but the content is essentially complete. > > —Bill > ------------------------------------------------ Peter Bienstman Ghent University, Dept. of Information Technology Sint-Pietersnieuwstraat 41, B-9000 Gent, Belgium tel: +32 9 264 34 46, fax: +32 9 264 35 93 WWW: http://photonics.intec.UGent.be email: [email protected] ------------------------------------------------ --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "mnemosyne-proj-users" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/mnemosyne-proj-users?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
