Flashcards are a great resource when it comes to studying. They are arguably one of the most popular method for studying for exams and there’s a valid reason for this – they encourage studying through a method called active recall. Active recall is a way to make your brain actively acquire information rather than just absorbing it passively.



If used properly, flashcards can be a great method to promote active recall. It does this in two ways:

It forces you to re-read the text you want to study and makes you scan for the important information inside of it. By asking questions on flashcards, it forces you to actively recall the information that you learned to answer those questions (in the same manner as exams!)

So how can you make the best use out of your flashcards? Well hopefully this blog will help you with that, so let’s get right into it.

1. Make your own flashcards

There are an almost unending library of other peoples flash cards online. A quick google search can show thousands of other people flashcards for you to download and use. There are also a number of websites and apps that have prebuilt flashcards to use. While these seem like a good idea on the surface because they take away the time that it takes to make the flashcards, they often times are not as useful as making your own cards.

The reason why it’s important to make your own flashcards is that some of the integral parts of learning are:

Reading information

Extracting some key information

Deciding which part of that information is most useful

Exporting that information and making something new with it (your own words)

2. Keep your flashcards consistent

This is more of a personal preference one (so if it doesn’t apply to you then skip to the next one), but I like to keep my flashcards looking the same. The reason for this is so that I know the layout of each card and I can easily tell what means what. If you’re like me and use multiple colours pens for different information (and no I don’t mean I have thousands of coloured pens for every imaginable colour. I only use the standard blue, black, red and green) then keeping the meaning of those colours consistent throughout your flashcards is essential.





For instance, I’m currently studying astrophysics, so I would have one colour (black) as my general writing colour, one colour (red) for my equations, one colour (blue) for my definitions and another (green) for any extra important information. And by keeping this consistent ant throughout my whole flashcard collection, I know exactly what is what.

3. Say your answers out loud when studying