Two apps for creating Flash Cards for Mastery Learning: Brainscape and Bookwidgets

Brainscape is mainly a flash-card creation app. Bookwidgets has one function for creating flash cards. However, there are some differences between the workings of the two apps. 

Working through decks of flash cards has been a popular activity for mastery learning. On one side of a flash card is a concept, a question, etc.. On the other side is the answer, or what has to be learnt. Students work through a deck of flash cards with the aim of getting all the answers correct. 

With Brainscape, when students have tried one card and looked at the answer, they assess how difficult they have found the question on a 5-point scale: 

For example, if they have found a question difficult, they can rate their mastery level as "Not at all". 

When they have finished studying a deck, then when they start again, those cards for which their mastery levels have been rated low will appear more frequently in the new attempt. 

This may be followed by a third round of study, and so on. The longer-term aim is to completely master the cards in a deck. 

Bookwidgets works slightly differently. Like Brainscape, students work through a deck of flash cards. They look at the prompt, or question on each card, attempt to give an answer, and flip over the card to check their answer. Then they tap 'Correct' or 'Wrong' to indicate their attempt. When they are done with the whole deck, their overall result will be shown. Then, they can click on 'Try missed questions.' Then only the cards they got wrong will reappear. 

In fact, Quizlet (also an app for creating Flash Cards) also has a similar Mastery design, but for the "Learn", and "Play" modes, students will be given MC questions, the distractors of which are from other cards in a deck. In other words, they choose from the given distractors, instead of challenging their memory.