Aefing is built on what memory research has found about learning that lasts. Here is what the app does, why, and the studies behind each part. The studies are listed at the end so you can read them yourself.
You answer first, then read why
Reading notes feels productive, but testing yourself is what builds memory. A review of 222 classroom studies with over 48,000 learners found that quizzing raised what learners learned by a medium amount (Yang et al., 2021). So every question in Aefing is answered before its explanation appears, and every answer gets feedback. Without feedback, a quiz did no better than rereading the key facts (Kang et al., 2007).
Each question comes back just before you would forget it
Spreading practice over days and weeks beats cramming, and the right gap grows with how long you need to remember (Cepeda et al., 2006). Aefing schedules each question with a model of your own memory and brings it back when your chance of recalling it is about to drop below your target.
A miss comes back until it stays
Getting an item right once is not enough. Relearning each item to a correct answer on several separate days kept it for months (Rawson and Dunlosky, 2011). In real courses, learners who relearned this way scored more than 10 percent higher on those concepts in their exams, and still recalled most of them weeks later (Rawson, Dunlosky and Sciartelli, 2013). Aefing brings a missed question back later in the same session and again on later days.
Your daily set mixes topics on purpose
Practicing one topic at a time feels easier. Mixing topics feels harder and works much better. In a trial with 787 learners, the mixed group scored 61 percent on a test a month later against 38 percent for the blocked group (Rohrer et al., 2020). The reason is that an exam never tells you which topic a question is from. Mixed practice trains you to tell them apart. Aefing mixes your daily set across topics and subjects, and keeps a case's questions together.
Say how sure you are
Before you answer, you rate how sure you are, from Unsure to Sure; the options show after you rate. It is on from the start, and Settings turns it off under Rate how sure you are before answering. The mistakes you were confident about are the ones you are most likely to correct next time (Butterfield and Metcalfe, 2001). Progress shows how often you were right when you said Sure, so you know when "I'm sure" really means sure.
Your retention number is real
When learners judge their own answers too generously, they stop studying too soon and keep less (Dunlosky and Rawson, 2012). Aefing never reports practice accuracy as retention. Your retention comes from a separate check on a sample of what you studied earlier.
Set a time and a place
People who decide when and where they will study keep to it noticeably more often than people who only intend to (Gollwitzer and Sheeran, 2006). Aefing asks for your study time and days, and Today shows how many days are left to your target date and about how long today's set will take.
No streaks
Rewards you work for can crowd out the reason you started, while honest feedback on progress helps (Deci, Koestner and Ryan, 1999). Aefing measures your progress against your own goal, not against a streak.
What we do not claim
Aefing does not sort you by a "learning style". Research found virtually no evidence that matching teaching to a style helps (Pashler et al., 2008). Aefing does not promise a result. The studies above are averages over many learners, and what you get depends on your practice.
The studies
- Butterfield, B. and Metcalfe, J. (2001). Errors committed with high confidence are hypercorrected. Journal of Experimental Psychology, Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 27(6), 1491 to 1494.
- Cepeda, N. J., Pashler, H., Vul, E., Wixted, J. T. and Rohrer, D. (2006). Distributed practice in verbal recall tasks, a review and quantitative synthesis. Psychological Bulletin, 132(3), 354 to 380.
- Deci, E. L., Koestner, R. and Ryan, R. M. (1999). A meta analytic review of experiments examining the effects of extrinsic rewards on intrinsic motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 125(6), 627 to 668.
- Dunlosky, J. and Rawson, K. A. (2012). Overconfidence produces underachievement, inaccurate self evaluations undermine students' learning and retention. Learning and Instruction, 22(4), 271 to 280.
- Gollwitzer, P. M. and Sheeran, P. (2006). Implementation intentions and goal achievement, a meta analysis of effects and processes. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 38, 69 to 119.
- Kang, S. H. K., McDermott, K. B. and Roediger, H. L. (2007). Test format and corrective feedback modify the effect of testing on long term retention. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 19(4/5), 528 to 558.
- Pashler, H., McDaniel, M., Rohrer, D. and Bjork, R. (2008). Learning styles, concepts and evidence. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 9(3), 105 to 119.
- Rawson, K. A. and Dunlosky, J. (2011). Optimizing schedules of retrieval practice for durable and efficient learning, how much is enough? Journal of Experimental Psychology, General, 140(3), 283 to 302.
- Rawson, K. A., Dunlosky, J. and Sciartelli, S. M. (2013). The power of successive relearning, improving performance on course exams and long term retention. Educational Psychology Review, 25(4), 523 to 548.
- Rohrer, D., Dedrick, R. F., Hartwig, M. K. and Cheung, C. N. (2020). A randomized controlled trial of interleaved mathematics practice. Journal of Educational Psychology, 112(1), 40 to 52.
- Yang, C., Luo, L., Vadillo, M. A., Yu, R. and Shanks, D. R. (2021). Testing (quizzing) boosts classroom learning, a systematic and meta analytic review. Psychological Bulletin, 147(4), 399 to 435.