Practice and review

Listening to a lecture feels like having understood it. What separates that from really understanding it is pulling it out of memory without looking, and that is what these two cards on the document page do, each in its own way.

Practice

Practice is a stretch of questions on what you have already studied, and only on that: it never asks about a slide you have not reached, and it does not show you the slide while you answer. You pick how much time you have, about 5, up to 15 or about 30 minutes, and that becomes 8, 20 or 40 questions. If you have got further since last time, you first choose whether to practise the new part, the earlier part or all of it.

The questions are written when you open the session, from what Mina explained to you, so the first time with a document takes a little while before the first one appears. Each one is checked before it is shown, claim by claim, and any that does not match the lecture is thrown out. Slides that are only about the course, like the cover or the syllabus, produce no questions.

It counts questions, not minutes. Under the clock at the top right it says which one you are on, "3 of 8", and an upright bar fills from the bottom up with each answer: a clock running ahead of you rushes you, and thinking an answer through should not cost you progress. While the first questions are being put together there is no count and no bar. And the session's time only runs while a question is on screen: the minutes spent writing the next one do not count.

Four levels that adapt

You start at the second level, and every four answers it goes up or down depending on how you are doing. If a hard one goes wrong, the next one comes from the same slide and gives you more of a hand.

• Recognize. True or false, multiple choice, filling in the missing word, flashcards and matching each term with what it means.
• Understand. Several correct answers, putting steps in order, the open question and explaining it in your own words, typed or dictated.
• Apply. A case, sorting into categories and a problem with numbers.
• Master. Spotting the mistake, choosing the best argument and explaining it to a classmate who missed the lecture.

Before seeing whether you got it right, you say how sure you were, because after seeing the answer everyone was sure. The right answer turns green and the wrong one red.

What you explain in your own words is compared against the concept that was asked about, not the whole slide, and it tells you which ideas you covered and what you missed.

How it went

At the end, a number from 0 to 100 inside a ring, weighted towards the harder questions, and what you can now do with those concepts. The colour says how it went: green from 75, yellow from 50 and red below that. It is there to show how you are doing from one time to the next, not to pass or fail you.

Every session stays on the document page and opens to the side: what you know, what came out halfway and what needs going over, with what you answered and what the answer was. From there, See slide takes you into the lecture, and the viewer's close button brings you back to the same session, at the same spot.

What you got wrong comes back the next day, what you got right once comes back in three days and what you got right twice in a row, in a week. The Practice card tells you how many are due today. And practising again brings new questions: first what you did not know, and a fresh batch is written from what you already did.

The session is saved to disk at every step: reloading or restarting the app does not lose it. If you leave halfway, it asks you once whether you would rather keep going; however you leave, it stays in progress with the clock stopped, and you pick it up from its row on the document page. And if you leave while the first questions are still being put together, it asks nothing: they keep being written and the session waits for you.

Review

Reviewing is not listening to a shorter version of the lecture: that is just listening again. It is remembering first and looking afterwards. The card gives you a concept from the lecture with its name and a short hint, you write what you remember, however it comes out, and only when you check do you see the ideas it is made of and the slides it comes from, as thumbnails that grow when you tap them.

There is no time to pick: concepts keep coming until you leave. That is why the order matters. First what you could not recall last time, what you got wrong in practice and the slides you asked about; then one for each topic of the lecture; then the rest. What you recalled well less than three days ago goes to the end.

It does not ask you how it went. How many ideas you recalled is what says that, and it is saved on its own to decide what comes back next time.