How to Turn Your Notes Into Online Flashcards

If you have structured your notes the way I suggest in my guide here it is very easy to convert them to online flashcards using quizlet.com. Sign up for a free account and click “create a study set” to make your first set of flashcards.

Here you can see a rough example of how I convert my notes into flashcards. Depending how difficult the class is, what I already know, and how important the notes are, I will alter how thorough I am in either converting every bit of information or just the important parts. Let’s take a look at the same set of notes that we used in the article about how to take notes.

There are three different basic structures you can employ to make the flashcards. The most simple is the word-definition structure. Here you can see I used this structure for the term “herd immunity.” On one side is the term and on the other side is the definition.

The next basic structure is the question format. One one side you ask a question and on the other you provide an answer. This format works best when the answer to the question is short. You can see I use this structure when I ask “what is the SIR equation? Here you can see an example of exactly how I converted these notes to online flashcards on quizlet.com.

The final format is the fill in format. One one side is either a statement, multiple statements, or a question with the answer under it with certain key words replaced with underscores. On the other side are the words that have been replaced by underscores in order and separated by commas. This format works the best with complex and long-form information that you must know well such as a I have shown below. Notice that the key words I have replaced are the ones that I have decided are the most important for the class based on the three factors I mentioned earlier (how difficult the class is, what I already know, and how important the notes are).