Flashcards from your own lectures
Flashcards work because they force you to produce the answer instead of recognising it. The tedious part has always been writing them. Alessandria makes them from your own recordings — fifteen to twenty-five per lecture, one fact each, taken from what was actually said in the room — and a larger deck for the whole course when you have several lectures.
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Why flashcards work, and why yours never got written
Rereading notes feels like studying and mostly is not: the text is in front of you, so recognising it is easy and you mistake recognition for knowledge. A card hides the answer, and hiding the answer is the entire mechanism.
The problem was never whether they work. It is that making a good deck for one lecture takes about as long as the lecture did, and that is time nobody has in week seven.
Cards made from someone else’s syllabus are a different product entirely. These come from your lecture, your lecturer, your emphasis.
What the cards are like
- One fact per card. A card that asks three things at once cannot be marked right or wrong, which makes it useless for testing yourself.
- Fifteen to twenty-five per lecture, more when the lecture was dense. The number follows the content rather than a target.
- Only what was said. No card about a topic your lecturer skipped, however standard it might be in the subject.
- Questions worth asking. Definitions, distinctions, causes, conditions, exceptions — not trivia about which year a slide was made.
The lecture deck and the course deck
Each lecture gets its own deck, and it is ready with the notes. Separately, once a course has several lectures, you can build a course deck of around fifty cards drawn from every lecture in it — more when the course is long.
The course deck is not the lecture decks piled up. It is a selection across the whole syllabus, which is what you want in the last week: proportionate coverage rather than everything from week one and nothing from week nine.
How to revise them
Open the deck
On a laptop or a phone, from the browser. Between lectures, on a bus, in the ten minutes before a seminar — the deck is the format that survives those ten minutes.
Answer before you look
Out loud, or at least as a full sentence in your head. The moment you uncover the answer before answering, the card has done nothing for you.
Uncover everything when you are revising fast
On a second pass you can reveal the whole deck and read it as a list of facts. Different job, and a legitimate one — just not the same as testing yourself.
What they do not do
- They do not export to Anki. If your revision lives in an Anki deck you already keep, these cards will not go into it: they are revised inside Alessandria. Worth knowing before you sign up rather than after.
- There is no download. Cards, notes, maps and quizzes are read here. That is a deliberate choice, not a missing feature.
- They do not schedule your revision for you. Spacing your repetitions is still yours to organise — the study plan tool helps with the days, not the cards.
- They are not a substitute for the notes. Cards test facts. The reasoning that joins the facts is in the notes, and an oral exam asks for the reasoning.
From the explanation to the cards
…so the resting membrane potential sits around minus seventy millivolts, and the reason it sits there rather than at the potassium equilibrium is that the membrane isn’t perfectly selective — there’s a small sodium leak, which drags it up a bit. And the pump, the sodium-potassium pump, is doing two jobs: it maintains the gradients, and because it moves three sodium out for every two potassium in, it’s itself slightly electrogenic. Small contribution, but it’s there, and people forget the ratio…
Flashcards — resting membrane potential
Q: What is the approximate resting membrane potential? — A: About minus seventy millivolts.
Q: Why does it not sit at the potassium equilibrium potential? — A: Because the membrane is not perfectly selective: a small sodium leak pulls it away.
Q: What ratio does the sodium-potassium pump move ions in? — A: Three sodium out for every two potassium in.
Q: Why is the pump described as electrogenic? — A: Because the unequal ratio means it moves net charge, contributing slightly to the potential.
A made-up example: we wrote the lecture below ourselves. No classroom recording and no real lecturer’s material ever appears on this page.
Questions about flashcards
Can I import them into Anki?
No. The cards are revised inside Alessandria and there is no export to Anki or to any other deck format. If your revision already lives in Anki, this is the thing to know before signing up.
How many cards do I get from one lecture?
Between fifteen and twenty-five, more when the lecture was dense. The number follows what was actually said rather than a fixed target.
Do I have to ask for them?
No. The deck for a lecture arrives with the notes. The deck for a whole course is a separate tool you run when you want it.
Can I edit or add a card?
The decks are generated from your lectures and revised as they come. Writing and maintaining your own cards by hand is a different workflow, and a dedicated card app does it better.
Are the cards in the language of the lecture?
Yes. You will be examined in the words your lecturer used, so those are the words on the cards.
Turn your last lecture into a deck
One recording gives you a deck in a few minutes. Answer five cards out loud and you will know straight away how much of that hour stayed.
Your first two lectures are free. No credit card needed.