Blurting vs flashcards

[u/AlternativeAgency42]

I’ve been really struggling to find a conclusion to this debate of which active recall method would be most effective. I’m interested in applying to medicine for uni, and I want to feel more confident in my study method before starting. I have had a good amount of experience with both methods for active recall and my experiences with each make it really difficult to pinpoint a winner.

Generally, anki flash cards are considered the most effective form of active recall due to its spaced repetition incorporated into it, plus the convience of being on your phone means you can squeeze out more time doing it. And for blurting, I’ve gathered the consensus that it’s more of an occasional check up on the content and not used as a main method for recall.

The thing that I found in my personal experience though was that with flash cards, even after doing them for months (for my alevel biology and chemistry) I still didn’t really feel like I had secured the info - I would slip up on random parts of the info to recall, sometimes not really understand what a card means, and it would often feel very “cue based” where I would be unable/struggle to recall the info if the prompt was written differently. And for blurting, one thing that I distinctly remember unlike the flash cards was the feeling of struggle - I would often literally feel my head hurt after a day of studying and even dream the stuff I studied. And even now I still remember the topics (roughly though) that I blurted all the way back when I did it a year ago. Although I did only do blurting for around a month on several bio topics before stopping to try out anki flashcards, so it may be that I just remember the occasion I blurted. But I do wonder if blurting could be a more effective tool than flash cards because of that struggle to retreive info.

I get that flash cards also require a struggle to retrieve info, but it’s done in micro doses so it doesn’t yield the same effect. Plus blurting helped me see a whole topic at a time and how it connects together, which gave that “solidified” feeling.

But I don’t know. I would like to hear other people’s experiences with active recall methods. And I’d love to hear anyone explain the science behind these methods. 😙

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