How to make effective flashcards?

I’m sure that serious studies said that the act of writing them down, was very revisionary (slight misuse of the word) actually helpful

You have to also review them, or write them again, but simplify to just a few words, slowly rewrite them over a day or so, have time off, the odd half-hour. Write in different colours, blue red black.
Have a day off, then do it again.

I did buy a £13 app, quizlet, now found out that it’s a recurring annual purchase, so dumped it

Here’s a detail articulated response in how to use flashcards for chemistry.

Step 1 - read the material / page from the textbook. Get the general concept, if you are completely unsure of what is going on, then is when you start googling it, websites such as Wikipedia is good for this. It helps you get a general idea, it’s called “scoping the subject”

Step 2 - if the specification for OCR AS Chemistry or whatever exam board you do isn’t already down loaded or printed next to you then open it up on google. You can find the tailored ones which are just specific to year 12, so just type year 12 AS *your exam board* Chemistry Specification.

Step 3 - now look at what it’s saying, it gives you a structure of what you need to be able to do. So now, as I’ve said, if it asks for definition recall that’s when you should start considering making a flashcard on the specific bit of material, from your text book.

Step 4 - to aid in your understanding, and memorisation of the steps, I’d advise you copy the “worked example” from the text book and stick it onto your flashcard, so write the question then how they get the answer, then that’s that whole topic done. Then repeat.

thank you! Do you know of any alternative ways I can revise chemistry like mindmaps that I could try please

You're graded based on the exam, so practise doing the exam; do the questions for now, then later on once you're nearing the end of the course do past papers. That's all I did for three of my A-levels.

My personal opinion is that flashcards give you the feeling that you're revising and being productive when they're not that helpful. Maybe I'm wrong. You can use flashcards for memorising certain must-know pieces of information, but information really sticks in better when you apply it.

I use a mix of cloze deletion and basic cards. I would say about 60/40. With a few image occlusion cards sprinkled in there. All of my basic cards are phrased in the form of a question. For example, 'What is the mechanism of Action of Sumatriptan?' etc. My cloze deletion cards are for quick little facts I need to know.

My advice would be to rephrase the material your professor gives you into your own words and don't just copy and paste all the time. This will help with retention. Also every now and then I will generate my own simple multiple choice questions which I find helps my retention as well. Something else that helped me was watching this video

A couple other things that could help are:

The answers to your cloze deletions should not be more than a few words. If I write sentence long answers to cloze deletion cards, I simply would never remember them.If the answer to a card requires a full sentence or longer, it is best to write is as a Basic card.If the answer to a card is more of a conceptual thing, then I would write it as a Basic card, and attempt to memorize the concept, and not the answer word for word.Use the 'extra' field. It is very useful for things that you think probably won't be tested but you still want to look at on the off chance that it is.

Flashcards can be helpful if you use them well. Find exam questions and use those, as that is literally what you need to know. Write mark schemes on the back too. Studyblue is free and I use it. On the go, during a gap in lessons, you can flick through and test yourself.

We have biology in common, and that's how I used cue cards.

Psychology I did a similar thing, but focused more on exam technique. E.g. discuss means outline and evaluate, so AO1 and AO3. Learn what the examiner wants, mindlessly copying info won't help you learn or understand it.

Simple the exact same thing, but this time
Try and always draw the whole mind map from memory after like 4 days you’ve learnt it, this will be just as effective as flashcards.

Just to add to this. If you’ve drawn it out and see that you have missed quite a lot of information out that you’ve simply forgotten, that’s when you should start considering flashcarding it.

After you have done all of this, there’s only so much flash cards can take you, I reckon you could get a grade B just from flashcards. However, if you really want that A/A* grade, the secret is now focusing on past papers. As @sinnoh says, you’re tested on how to answer exam questions so it’ll be best to focus on that during the final weeks of your exam.

I've seen study blue but I try not to use other people's flashcards as I feel like there may be something wrong but thank you I'll have another look and see if I can add it in to mine