Give me another day and I'll respond in full; but my thesis is taken from the book "Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning" which was written by a group of neuro- and cognitive scientists on what are the most effective ways to learn.

The one chapter that stood out very clear, especially in a college setting, was how inefficient flash cards were compare to other methods like taking a practice exam instead.

There are a lot of executive summaries on the book and I've posted comments in support of their science backed methods as well.

It's also something I'm personally testing myself this year regarding programming since I've had great success doing their methods in other facets of my life.

> The one chapter that stood out very clear, especially in a college setting, was how inefficient flash cards were compare to other methods like taking a practice exam instead.

In order to take a practice exam, you need to understand the terms being used in the exam ahead of time. That's where flash cards come into play.

That said, to achieve mastery, I think you probably need both.

You might really like the book, because method they espouse for mastery is to have space varied practice where you reinforce retrieval of concepts during practice. Retrieval here meaning being able to correctly use information that you learned.

That's basically the core tenant of the book, it's basically trying to instill that the best pedagogy.

There was an interesting section IIRC about airline pilots and how they intersperse learning the various protocols compared to getting them in simulators ASAP.

I thought I still had the book but I think I read it from a library now as it's not in my library. I feel bad for wanting to post a youtube summary, but this reddit thread is more concise:

https://www.reddit.com/r/step1/comments/ebpl5a/few_principle...

edit: after reading everything I think I took flash cards under the wrong context and really wish I had the book now.