I've been thinking a lot about flashcards lately because of the story I'm about to tell in the next paragraph. I'm a big fan of flashcards as a retrieval strategy in a toolbox of strategies, but only if they are employed correctly. The story below has made me appreciate the huge potential of flashcards, how they need to be employed correctly if they are to be of greatest effect and how we need to explicitly teach students to use them well.
Recently I worked with a small group of five Year 9 pupils on their independent study techniques. All boys, and all very bright. However, they had underperformed significantly in Winter examinations, and I was keen to understand why. So, in the first session in my Office I got them to think of a topic which they had struggled with in a subject for the recent examinations. They were then given ten flashcards each and told to use their Knowledge Organisers to write flashcards on the topic. After having written their flashcards, they were given a short time for review, and then all fifty flashcards were put into a pile in the centre of the table. I then shuffled the pile and asked each boy in turn the questions on the flashcards - even if it wasn't one that they had written.
To say their knowledge was shaky was an understatement. Approximately six out of ten flashcards were answered incorrectly in that first session. As the session progressed, I created a 'Know it' and 'Don't Know It' pile. If any of the boys got a flashcard wrong, it went immediately into the 'Don't Know It' pile. Unfortunately for the boys, a flashcard in the 'Don't Know It' pile meant a further session the following day, as their 'release' from the sessions was dependent upon a clean sweep of correct answers by them all. In the next session, the following day, recall was better - helped no doubt by more frequent deployment and repetition of the flashcards in the 'Don't Know it' Pile. The next day, a little better again, but no clean sweep. By Friday - Session 5, the boys had high hopes that 'today would be the day'. The day of a clean sweep.
Unfortunately it wasn't to be, but their recall had improved significantly in the five days - about nine out of ten flashcards now being answered correctly. For me, it was heartening and somewhat amusing to see their collective responsibility - encouraging each other when they saw one of their mates struggling to answer. Phrases like "You can do it! You know this one!" When I broke the news to them that they would have to come back on Monday, one of them said immediately: "Right, lads, get the remaining flashcards into the GroupChat!". My ears pricked up. It transpired that they had created a GroupChat for the purposes of posting and sharing flashcards with each other in order to practise! They had called this GroupChat "The Office"! I found this encouraging, and amusing. But what gave me most joy from those sessions were the ever increasing glints of success in those boys' eyes when they saw their knowledge base improve - particularly when they were starting to answer correctly what they had previously answered incorrectly. I took the opportunity to ask the boys that Friday in the session if they could not see for themselves that their knowledge base was increasing. They spoke enthusiastically about it. One boy said that he already felt it had helped with lessons in a particular subject. Another boy said that he had been telling his father how 'good' the sessions were.
As many of the subjects I was quizzing the boys on from their flashcards were unfamiliar to me, I asked the boys on occasion to 'teach' me what the flashcard was relating to. Whether music theory, philosophy in Religious Studies or moles in Chemistry, I learnt a lot as well. And as the boys undertook the process of 'teaching' me, I could almost visibly see the cognitive processes they were undertaking - retrieving the key information in their minds and then summarising it appropriately for me - as a novice. That process of 'teaching' somebody reinforces the Protegé Effect, and ultimately as a result reinforces learning. Innerdrive has a good blog on the Protegé Effect here, and it is also another tool in the generative learning toolbox.
The boys were eventually 'released' the following Tuesday, having achieved that 'clean sweep'. All of them now signed up to the school's Study Skills Club in the New Year where they will have the opportunity to space and interleave their retrieval techniques in the run-up to May examinations. Because, of course, the true test of whether real learning has occurred will be if they can recall it in some weeks and some months later - not after just a few days.
Does this mean that the boys are now fully fledged, matured and 'signed up' in relation to independent study, never to look back? No. In fact, their motives for the GroupChat above were probably with one end goal in mind - 'release' from the sessions which were taking place in their free time. In fact, on one day when they put all their flashcards into the pile at the start of the session, I noticed that the 'harder' ones had mysteriously disappeared - not least a difficult 'impressive' Spanish sentence about going to to beach with their parents. After a very short investigation, they were suddenly 'found' in one of the boys' pockets! Their ingenuity made me laugh. Indeed, the sessions were punctuated with humour and were a reminder to me of the joys of teaching and doing the job that we do. These were bright, able boys. These were intelligent boys. These were likeable boys with huge potential. They had just been laid-back, by their own admission 'lazy' about their study habits. And they probably hadn't been employing effective techniques, despite the promotion of such techniques in school. They are not quite mature enough yet to undertake independent study 'independently', and probably still need what Jovita Castelino describes as 'intrusive strategies' in her recent excellent book 'The Homework Conundrum'. But with the right amount of intervention support for their independent study, I am convinced that each of them will go on to succeed at a very high level academically. Did the sessions where they worked on flashcards help them to see what can be achieved with effective independent study, and did it help them to experience a little success in their learning? I hope so. I believe so.
Nowadays, with greater explicit emphasis on 'retrieval practice' and with growing evidence as to the power of generative learning, flashcards have been promoted quite extensively as a useful 'tool' in the independent study 'toolbox'. If used properly, they have the potential to facilitate transfer of chunks of core, powerful knowledge into long-term memory as a result of students plucking the information from memory before flipping the card over to check the answer. If students actively write their own flashcards rather than being given a ready-made set, research suggests that it can strengthen memory retention, help to forge stronger connections between chunks of knowledge and thus facilitate a deeper understanding of material.
Last year I helped a Year 14 student as he prepared to re-sit a Biology module. We worked on flashcards together. My Biology knowledge is limited, given that I took it no further than Year 9 at school myself. I was amazed (and somewhat impressed) at the breadth of core knowledge required for A Level Biology. As an outsider almost, looking in, I was equally amazed as I watched the student starting to forge connections between chunks of knowledge as his knowledge base strengthened, slowly changing the schematic patterns in long-term memory.
We promote flashcard use heavily at my school as one retrieval strategy in a toolbox of strategies. In fact, in Year 7 our pupils make flashcard holders in Technology lessons, according to the Leitner System (see image). When I talk with a student about how they revise, and if they tell me that they don't think that flashcards are "their thing" (a very small number of pupils would say this), I encourage them to consider whether they are employing them correctly. However my experience with the pupils above has reminded me that there is a lure of simplicity with flashcards, and we should not assume that they are so easy to use that we do not explicitly need to 'teach' pupils how to use them well. We do.
1:
Some students, perhaps for an easier life or for a sense of 'comfort', will choose only the easier material when generating their flashcards, or focus on knowledge they already know well. We should, of course, be encouraging them to 'eat the big frogs' and ensure that flashcards also contain the more challenging knowledge they may find more difficult, and we should demonstrate how flashcards can help to break this down into 'chunks'. It is useful to spend time 'modelling' effective flashcard creation in lessons.
2:
There is always a danger that pupils will put down incorrect information when generating their flashcards - incorrect spellings, a misconstrued answer, etc. Probably the best way to counter this is to ensure that they are taught to use their notes closely and carefully when preparing their independent study material. If the school employs a knowledge-rich curriculum, devising KOs so that they facilitate self-quizzing will assist this. After all, practice makes permanent. Only perfect practice makes perfect. Students need reminded of this often.
3:
Students will flip over the flashcard to see the answer before they have actually spent time trying to pluck the answer out of their memory. This, of course, defeats the purpose. In my experience, this issue is often exacerbated with online flashcards. Teaching students to read the question on the flashcard, then to pause and reflect before flipping over, is crucial.
4:
Of course, flashcards and similar retrieval strategies may help to give students core, powerful knowledge, but they will not necessarily give them the practice at 'applying' that knowledge. As our students progress on the continuum of novice to expert in a domain, it is important that we continually consider strategies for ensuring deliberate practice of application of knowledge.
I wish somebody had pointed me in the direction of flashcards when I was a student at school. Perhaps, students more astute than myself in those days might have caught on to their benefits themselves, but I don't remember a single one of my teachers ever once extolling their use. Probably because they weren't really a 'thing' in those days. Now they are. And with cognitive science continuing to give greater insights into effective classroom practice, independent study and metacognition, it really is a very exciting time for education. If I had a pound for every parent who has told me they wish they had received guidance on retrieval and independent study when they were at school, I would be on my way to becoming a millionaire.
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