Summary
Quizterix is a flashcard-based learning environment for historic events wrapped up in playable games. However, it goes far beyond traditional flashcards, as it includes a range of memorization techniques that make remembering facts, years, and the answers to hundreds of related questions easy.
If you are looking for details on the game rules or want to watch a video on how to play, please check here.
This learning environment is as much about a particular topic from the History syllabus as it is about building transferable skills. Building up the ability to effortlessly memorize hundreds of historical facts transfers to other subjects, especially the ones that rely on building a factual knowledge base: Biology, Geography, English (especially Literature), Sociology, Geology, and Psychology - but also parts of the Sciences. Equations and formulae in Maths and Physics, The periodic system in Chemistry, the names and characteristics of astronomical bodies, micro and macroeconomic concepts and indicators, and much more.
Quizterix promotes a brain-friendly learning and teaching style that benefits students and teachers alike. It starts from simple, and largely unstructured factual knowledge. It presents this knowledge in a way that makes it tens (with practice hundreds) of times easier to remember. It gives students a solid basis that makes the next step of understanding easier to take.
The Quizterix approach persists AO1 and AO2 level knowledge deeper and makes it resilient. It makes it easier for students to follow and benefit from AO3/AO4 level discussions in a classroom. It maximizes AO1 and AO2 grading and at the same time creates more time and context to establish the mindset and skills to pick up those crucial AO3 and AO4 extra points.
The Long Read
Introduction
Not many teachers or students have ever been introduced to brain-friendly memorization techniques. This is a bundle of concepts that work hand in hand: Memory palaces, the van Restorff effect, the major system, the spacing effect, and many more. The following is a long read for those who would like to get a feel of what a hands-on introduction to all of these tricks and concepts might feel like. We have assembled what a first Quizterix lesson could look like in a scripted style and added a number of explanations to stay both authentic and also provide useful background information.
If you are introducing Quizterix to your classroom, feel free to use the scripted conversations as a starting point for your lesson plan. We also provide a more standardised downloadable lesson plan for your convenience.
World memory champion Alex Mullen preparing to memorise dozens of shuffled card decks within one hour.
Before you start
Memorization techniques and how they work are counter-intuitive for those, who have not experienced them themselves. It is not obvious why using seemingly unrelated silly images and mnemonics would form faster and deeper memories than “just” brute force memorization.
If you are in that camp: The reason why these techniques are used by memory champions is that they are highly effective. None of the competitors memorizes a deck of cards by brute force. They memorize a funny, grotesque, and absurd walk through a memory palace full of little stories and images just like those in Quizterix. With training, the human mind can memorize a deck of cards in 14 seconds. Or 48 decks in one hour. Or the dates of 241 historic events in 5 minutes. These feats take training and refined methods. Quizterix provides a gentle introduction, a beginner’s version, of these techniques. It is easy to pick up and requires no upfront training. It also performs much better than brute force.
Teachers are under time pressure. Efficiency is imperative. Therefore it is important to realize:
When your students have a giggle about leeches in the sewers or a rattlesnake kissing a doctor, they do not waste time. They memorize using the most efficient techniques available.
First Classroom gameplay
The first gameplay takes about one hour. Games of 3-5 players are most effective. There is a total of 52 events, selecting about 30 is enough to take in for a first try. The cards are roughly ordered by importance. Just using the 7s, 8s, 9s, 10s, Jacks, Queens, Kings, and Aces is a good starting point. It is possible, and may be worthwhile, to add any other events that may be further down the hierarchy, or remove some of the higher up once. The quiz can be tailored to fit what is considered important in the classroom context.
Groups of players can sit around a table or on the floor to play. The rules are easy to understand and available on one of the cards. Students can double-check the rules whenever needed.
Introduce Mnemonics
The major system is a simple mapping between consonants and numbers. There is a card in the game that explains the details. Players pick these up in gameplay. It is beneficial to go through the encoding with the help of a couple of examples. The following is the outline of a potential lesson containing all the information players need to get going.
The teacher could prepare the whiteboard with 3 events:
Leeches Sheltering in Sewers - L=5, Sh=6, Sewers=Suez - Suez Crisis 1956
Loathsome Killer Spuds - L=5, K=7, Spuds=Sputnik - Sputnik 1957
Shelling a Tough Walnut - Sh=6, T=1, Walnut = Wall - Berlin Wall built 1961
“This is how the game works. Players have to remember crazy little images for each event. Here are 3 examples. Everyone, have a look at the major mnemonic card. L is a 5, Sh is a 6 and Sewers sounds like Suez. This is the Suez Crisis in 1956. ‘Leeches Sheltering is Sewers’ is called a mnemonic. Can anyone explain why ‘Loathsome Killer Spuds’ is a mnemonic for Sputnik in 1957?” - Repeat with Shelling a Tough Walnut if necessary
“Let’s see if you have got the hang of it. For these 3 events - who can come up with a better mnemonic?” - Give 1 minute time. This is hard to do with no notice. Most groups need some support with this step.
If nobody comes up with a mnemonic: “I have one. Who can guess which event I am talking about? Leaky Car Sputters”
If someone does come up with a mnemonic: “Great! Who can guess what [student name]’s mnemonic is for?'“ - someone should be able to guess
Introduce Gameplay
There is a game rules card in each pack and further clarifications are in the game instructions. A simple and quick way to get all groups up to speed with the rules is to walk through the individual parts of a turn. If you have not played the game yourself before, the following script contains the essential steps. Please adapt to the needs of your group:
“Let’s start the game! Every player gets 4 events cards, image side up. Put them in a line in front of you. This is your timeline.”
“Each player is allowed to flip one of the cards but only if they know the event, the date, and the mnemonic at the beginning of their turn.”
“The goal of the game is to get the longest timeline and have the events all in order.”
“Every team: select one player to start. I’ll talk you through a turn! Put the “Gameplay: Turn rules” on the table and check if I get this right”
“Step 1: The player takes one new card from the deck and puts it into their own timeline.”
“We don’t know any events and dates yet, so let’s skip step 2.”
“We will play step 3: please choose one of your cards and peek. Keep it a secret: Don’t show the other side to the other players. Try to memorize the mnemonic! Look up how the year is encoded. You have to wait until it is your turn next time. If you still remember the event name and the mnemonic and you can explain the year, you can flip the card over! So don’t forget!“
“Peeking is optional. You did peek, so your turn is normally over and it is the next player’s turn. But this is the very first turn, so we are allowed to cheat. We continue with step 4.”
“This is about the questions and answers. Without looking at the question card, select one of the suits (hearts, clubs, diamonds, spades). Select someone to read out a question of that suit and check your answer! If you got the answer right, well done! If not your turn is normally over. But we keep on cheating and we pretend that you got it right.”
“Roll the dice now, and flip the rules card. If you rolled a 1,2,3,4, or 5, follow the instructions and do what the card says. You only get to play Mnemonic Panic! once there are 3 flipped cards on the table. Otherwise, it is too easy to guess.”
“Who thinks we should go through another turn - or are you ok to continue?” - repeat the introduction with the next player, if required
Support Gameplay
Playing Quizterix for the first time exposes teachers and students to a number of unfamiliar situations. Playing a game as a replacement for revising, memorizing new information about events and dates, using the major system, using the von Restorff effect, working with images as memory pegs, and simply being creative. We recommend making the first game all about establishing familiarity. Students are likely to memorize a number of events but are unlikely to recall all of them. Expect a significant increase in memorization performance for the second game.
When new skills or knowledge are acquired, our minds benefit from changes in pace. High-intensity phases and phases of relaxation should take turns. It is a good sign when you observe some students trying hard to remember a mnemonic, and others having a giggle. As a teacher, you can contribute to the success by walking around and asking simple questions. Here are a few that are suitable to help players along:
“Have you peeked under a card yet? Can you still remember the mnemonic?”
“Can you already remember some of the letters and how they connect to the numbers? I find the '“N” and the “M” easy: N has 2 legs and M has 3.”
“Do you find the questions too hard? You can simply skip them for now. We’ll include them the next time when you already know some of the events and dates.”
“Which mnemonic do you find the best? Which one is the worst?”
“Have you played Mnemonic Panic yet? What mnemonic did you come up with?”
….
Gameplay debrief
Students benefit from learning about some of the techniques they have experienced in their first game. We recommend doing this a couple of days after the game. Consider teaching the following points (also check the Memory Tricks page for further details):
“There are things that are generally hard to remember and others that are easy to remember. A memory trick links something that is hard to remember to something that is easy that you can memorize instead.”
“Numbers are hard to remember. Words and little stories are much easier. This is why the Major System works: It replaces numbers with words.”
“Guess how long it takes to forget a number? It is only 18 seconds, and then it is gone. You can remember funny images for a lot longer.”
“Funny, scary, gross, and absurd things are much easier to remember than plain facts. This is called the von Restorff effect. These things usually stick for several days and sometimes for years. Who can remember one of the images from the game? Why do you think they stuck in your mind?”
“Images are easy to remember. The human mind can process an image in 13 milliseconds, far less than it takes to read a paragraph or listen to someone speaking. An average human can recognize 5000 faces, thousands of locations, and tens of thousands of things by just looking at them. This is why the game works with images to remind you of the mnemonic. Which image from the game can you remember?”
“Eventually, our minds will forget almost everything we have ever seen or heard unless we revise. This is why we will have to play the game again. We will use something called the spacing effect to let the new knowledge sink in. We will have a second game in about a week, then play again in about a month, and then again at the end of the term.”
“For most of you, this will be all the revision you need. But not everyone has a great memory. I will put the game into the library so that you can have a go for yourself if you feel you need extra revision - or just for fun.”
Spaced Repetition
Even with memory tricks, long-term memorization will not happen without revisions. We recommend playing the game four times and using the spacing effect to the student’s advantage. Good timings are: Second game after 1 week, third game after 1 month, and a final game after 3 months. Most of the knowledge will then stick and students revision timer for an assessment will be cut to a fraction.
You can switch to Quizterix Snap! for the 3rd or 4th game, once most students know most of the events. At this point, the standard version of the game may be too slow-flowing to provide an adequate challenge. In this variant events and their dates are iterated a lot faster and the benefit of ultrashort revisions can be used and introduced.
Spaced Repetition at work. The optimal point to disrupt forgetting, i.e. to revise is when there is a 50/50 chance to still remember. Disrupting too early with frequent revisions in a day (cramming it all in) has no strengthening effect. Disrupting too late (when forgetting is complete) leads to re-learning and has no strengthening effect. Disrupting at the right time leads to a strengthening factor of 3 to 10. With memory tricks memory strengths after initial memorisation are typically a few days. Revisions after 1 week, 1 month and 3 months work well for most students.
The immediate benefits
Quizterix teaches a comprehensive knowledge base of a given topic. These are dozens of events and their dates, and hundreds of related facts. It also teaches memorization techniques beneficial for other topics and subjects. Even a beginner level of these skills accelerates the mundane task of memorizing facts for an assessment manifold. What takes hours to memorize by brute force can be reduced to a few minutes.
It does not teach how facts hang together, how they cause each other, or how to evaluate or judge them. However, establishing higher-tier knowledge is a lot faster and more straightforward when a rich and detailed factual knowledge base is already established.
Without it, teaching has to either stay factual to address the lack of a knowledge base or operate top-down. Top-down teaching results in a lack of discovery and ownership for the student and leads to a less memorable experience. A teacher has to discuss a general concept (e.g. The Cold War is an era of outstanding technological progress), introduce supporting facts as needed (e.g. nuclear arms, satellites, high-altitude aircraft, the moon landing), and either present a conclusion or guide the students towards it.
In comparison, students already know the facts after a couple of Quizterix games. Lessons can be used to introduce structure and establish strong cognitive schemas of general understanding. The conversation can start with a revision of the facts (e.g. Which of the events in the Cold War were related to advancements in technology? Can you remember which years these events were in? What was their significance? …), link in with existing knowledge (e.g. Can you think of another period in history where so much technological progress was made in such a short time?), and have the students reach the conclusion by themselves. Ownership of the critical thinking process is much more memorable than following a path to a foregone conclusion.
We use the metaphor of memory pegs for Quizterix knowledge. These are strong and sticky and keep new knowledge in place for long enough to be thoroughly processed. In the student’s mind, they are the anchor points to form cognitive schemas. Strong schemas are the way our mind structures knowledge and makes sense of the world. Forming insights and understanding without a meaningful cognitive schema is like hanging the washing up on a windy day without the pegs.
The long term benefits
We can view memory tricks and how they work with the help of Ebbinghaus’ forgetting curves. When a piece of information is easy to remember and you will not forget it for a long while, the forgetting curve is flat. If it slips your mind quickly, the forgetting curve is steep. Everything we have ever learned has a forgetting curve attached and some of them are steeper than others. From a factual learning perspective, we should prefer flat forgetting curves, so that we remember for longer.
There are two ways to achieve flat forgetting curves. We can start with a steep forgetting curve and then use the spacing effect to flatten it by placing revisions. Since revising too early does not increase memory strength and nor does revising too late, we have to be clever about the timing of revisions. It has been shown that the average human forgets numbers within 18 seconds. If we manage to triple memory strength with every revision, we would have to spread 8 of them over the course of a day or two so that it sticks for 24 hours longer. Does this remind you of a weekend cramming session so that you pass a test on Monday and forget most of the content come Wednesday?
With the help of memory tricks, we start with something that is inherently easy to remember. Images, locations, rhymes, tunes, and all sorts of other mnemonics. People, who frequently use memory palaces, report forgetting times between 2 days and 2 weeks. If you start out with a forgetting curve of 1 week, and you manage to triple memory strength with each revision, it only takes 4 revisions to get to 1 year of memory strength. The time spans are so long that they become easy to manage: You just play four rounds of Quizterix in year 1 and then one game every year as a refresher.
Last but not least, there is a strong social element around gameplay. Instead of revising alone locked away in your room, you can play with your peers to achieve the same effect. You can draw in parents and grandparents. Quizterix makes talking about and interacting with History natural and enjoyable!
For students who want to try our concepts as personal revision tools, you will find a discount code in your pack. With this code, you can purchase your own version of Quizterix with 50% off.