RESEARCH

The German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus studied this phenomenon in 1885 and noticed a remarkable thing. When people learned factual information, recall decays over time, but when a person relearns something, the time it takes to forget that fact increases, i.e. the person remembers it for a longer time.
Ebbinghaus’ work was expanded on in subsequent years. In 1930 Theophilos Boreas discovered that the rate of memory decay was logarithmic. Other researchers found that the kind of information has an effect on our ability to learn and remember. Material that is contextual or relevant to the learner is more easily retained, in contrast to the random sounds that Ebbinghaus worked with. In the 1970s, Sebastian Leitner developed a system to improve upon the efficiency of using flash cards for learning. In Leitner’s system, well known facts, those which are answered correctly, come up less frequently during memorization because the learner already knows them. Instead, the learner spends more time with facts that are more difficult to learn. These systems are now —referred to as Spaced Repetition Systems (SRS).

CURRENT TOOLS

Computers and the Internet have improved the possibilities even more. Once flash cards go digital, there are numerous benefits. Rather than using a manual sorting system, the computer program can track which questions need to be asked more frequently. Questions can also be asked forwards and backwards. If I were learning Spanish and I saw the word ‘casa’ I would know or find that the answer was ‘house’. When the card is digital, I can just as easily be asked to translate in the other direction, from English to Spanish. Of course, the information can also be relayed to learners with pictures, sounds and video.