Good point, Oisin. I think some of Supermemo's "20 rules" are relevant to the value of making one's own cards, for example "Do not learn if you do not understand." http://www.supermemo.com/articles/20rules.htm
Other considerations would include: - What is the quality of the pre-made deck? (Some of them are poorly done). - How long will it take to search and evaluate to find a good and relevant deck? - What are the technical challenges to making your own cards? (For example, using a pre-made geography deck complete with nice maps saved me a lot of time finding, clipping, and inserting the maps myself). - What is the motivational and learning value of a pre-made deck with 500 potentially low-relevance cards versus 50 self-made cards focused on facts you specifically need or want to learn? - How much does thinking about and writing your own card contribute to the overall learning process? - What is the nature of the material you want to memorize? A wordlist from chapter one of your German textbook is clearly defined and directly relevant, so a pre-made deck would be very useful. Pre-made cards for chapter one of your human anatomy textbook, complete with pictures, would be even more useful because it would be harder to create yourself. But 100 random facts about German history, not tied specifically to anything you are reading or studying, is less helpful for practical learning no matter how good the deck is. On Thu, Mar 7, 2013 at 9:42 AM, Oisín wrote: > > Although the idea is very widespread that creating your own cards is more > beneficial, I'm not sure to what degree it is, nor how (or whether) this has > been measured. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "mnemosyne-proj-users" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
