1,300 Exam Flashcards on iPhone, in Random Order

Flashcards for exam prep on an iPhone usually live in the gallery, between selfies and memes. Picture Lena. She has an exam in six weeks. Thirteen hundred questions. Each one is a card: a question and an answer. Some she photographed from the textbook, some are screenshots from the course handout, some are photos of her handwritten notes.

All thirteen hundred are on her phone. Between selfies, memes and photos of the cat.

Why doesn’t reviewing in order work?

At first Lena reviewed in order. She opened the gallery, found the first card and scrolled. In a week she knew the first two hundred questions by heart, because she saw them most often. And she never got to question nine hundred.

There is a second problem. In order, the brain memorizes not the answer but the neighbor: the question about kidneys is always followed by the one about the liver. At the exam the questions will come at random. And order won’t help.

A shelf of its own for the cards

In Spohad Lena put all the cards in one folder, “Exam.” She sent each one there with a swipe right from the feed, while the selfies and the cat stayed in their places.

Now the cards are a separate shelf. In the catalog there is an “Albums” button: it shows all the folders, and any of them can be opened as a feed. Only this folder, only cards. Not one extra frame. How such shelves work is in How to organize photos in folders.

Reviewing questions in random order

If the feed order is “Mixed,” the folder is shown in random order. Each card appears exactly once per round, and none repeats until the round ends. The question about kidneys might come first, or last. Lena doesn’t know what comes next. Like at the exam. For the other orders, see Big files on iPhone, which goes through all four pairs.

She looks at the question and answers in her head. Then she looks at the answer, on the same card or on the next one if that is how the handout was. Knows it: scrolls on. Doesn’t: adds a heart.

When the folder runs out, there is “Review all” at the bottom, and a new round starts, random again.

How do you mark what isn’t learned yet?

Here the heart works as a bookmark for yourself. In the evening Lena opens search and turns on the “Liked” filter, and gets a list of questions that don’t stay in her head yet. They can be moved to a separate folder, “Relearn,” and she can drill only that.

When a question is learned, Lena moves it back to “Exam” and removes the heart.

Gathering a topic’s questions

Thirteen hundred questions are several topics. Lena gives each card a topic tag: “kidneys,” “heart,” “pharmacology.” A tag can be dictated by voice while you look at the card. Then a search by tag gathers all the questions on one topic, handy when tomorrow’s seminar is exactly on it. How search by captions works is in How to find a photo on your iPhone fast.

What about PDF notes?

Part of Lena’s material is in PDF: notes, the lecturer’s slides. Spohad opens them right in the feed and remembers the page where she stopped. She can come back a week later and land in exactly the same place.

Quick guide: how to study with flashcards on your phone

1. Gather card photos and screenshots into one folder, with a swipe from the feed.
2. In “Tools,” choose the “Mixed” order.
3. Open the folder through “Albums” as a feed and answer in your head.
4. Don’t know the answer? Add a heart.
5. In the evening find everything “Liked” by search and move it to “Relearn.”
6. Add tags by topic so you can gather questions for a seminar.
7. When the round ends, “Review all.”

Fifteen minutes on the subway

The best part is that you can study anywhere. Fifteen minutes on the subway: twenty cards. A queue at the doctor’s: ten more. You don’t need the internet: the folder is on the phone.

In six weeks Lena went through her thirteen hundred questions in random order several times. Not in order, not “from the start,” but the way they will ask at the exam.

It is not a special flashcard program, just the feed of your folder. But sometimes that is enough. See how the feed scrolls on the home page.