For the whole picture i have read but not practised with mindmaps. It seems they can be powerful once you are skilled and do them shortly. I tend to use traditional layouts or schemes.

I agree with you mnemonics are useful for lists once you have ankied the items.

Your ideal card points are very useful but maybe with a few examples would be great. For me my master tip is to process the knowledge ready for srs method, so when you are reading anything you automatically try to convert in bits of information suitable for srs. Even rewording the original font to suit your needs of simplification and understanding.

Tagging and structuring of questions is also critical, mainly for a better future control.

Mainly for test exams, putting a clue at some complex items when clozing can be helpful because you do not need to memorise in an exact way, and this way i think gives you more quickness and is effortless. About this tip, i am not totally confident yet, but it could work.

I have been working on that exact issue over my last 2 semesters at grad school (withdrew dental application). The best answer I have found is to look the material over once, possibly minor annotating, without making Anki cards. This helps create a “big picture.”

After making the Anki cards and studying for a few days, return to the original source of the material and read it over trying to understand the big picture. Add Anki cards with small concepts and situations. I recently learned about Iron levels in normal patients, cancer patients, anemic patients, and sickle cell patients. I made a [Cloze] for each one and then 2 lines below the sentence I put the reason-concept for it. I didn’t test myself on that, though seeing it after giving an answer helped a lot.

Lists have become my enemy this year because I have had to make so many. I often forgot what the list was actually about. Looking back, all of the most successful lists I have used have been extremely short, a sequence of steps, and/or used a mnemonic device like an acronym or something. It would probably be helpful to use a mnemonic device with every list if possible. Writing it out also helps, though takes a lot of energy.

A list of tips would be helpful. I started doing that in the Ideal Card post, though I could certainly update it now that I have another year’s experience.

What are some good tips from your experience? I am interested to learn other methods of doing this.

I agree dividing complex knowledge into small bits is one of the keys for learning. This is very useful for tst exams. But if you have a subject or theme you are asked to explain with many small concepts, Have you got a suggestion to have this partial picture of a full concept?

When learning lists or enummerations, I create as many items in anki as elements by clozing every one. But I think if you leave track of the others is not totally good because it is helping you to recall, and maybe you think you know it better than in real. Any advice?

Finally, a suggestion. From your huge experience dealing with srs method and anki, why not creating some sort of decalog or best tips from your point of view.

Thanks again, you really helped me with many of your comments.

I cannot get any link at your contact page.

Thanks.

I cannot send my DAT deck out to anyone because it contains so much information from DAT Destroyer and other copyrighted sources.

The deck was personalized to me though to fill all the gaps in my knowledge and specific to how I wanted to approach the material. Your own deck, which will take a lot less time to make than you might think because the momentum gains quickly. It will also be specific to you and more powerful than if anyone else made it.

Please feel free to send me an e-mail with any questions about building cards and such.