Academics · Study Skills

Review it just before you would forget it.

List what you are learning and when the test is. The planner spaces each topic’s reviews at widening gaps, tells you what is due today and how to review it from memory, and reshuffles after every review depending on how it went.

Plan the reviews What you get

$5one-time · every device you sign in on

Buy · $5

Included with the Caveat Academy pass and Whole-school licenses. Or get it in the Study skills kit, $29 for 21 items.

The planner

The worked example is five topics a few days into the plan. Rate one of today’s reviews and watch the calendar move. Nothing you type leaves this browser.

Loading the planner. If nothing appears, turn on JavaScript.

What you get

Academics · Study SkillsAlso for Academics · Subject Resources$5Two modes: student and family

What you finish with: A dated review plan for everything you are studying: what is due today with a way to review it from memory, a five-week calendar with the minutes each day will take, each topic’s place on the ladder, and a schedule that moves when a review goes badly. Print the calendar, add the reviews to a calendar app or save a spreadsheet.
Who it is for: Middle school, high school and college students studying for unit tests, finals or a cumulative exam, and parents who run the review at home in family mode. Tutors and study skills teachers can use it to teach the method.
Format: Browser tool with a student mode and a family mode. Works on a phone or computer. Print or save as PDF, a calendar file (.ics), a .csv spreadsheet, and a file to move the plan between devices.
Access: $5 one-time, yours on every device you sign in on; the tool opens once you are signed in with it. Included with the Caveat Academy pass and Whole-school licenses. Also in the Study skills kit ($29) and the Academics Suite pass ($149), and 1 more bundle. Topics and review history stay in this browser; nothing is sent to Caveat.
Where it lives: The Study Skills space in Caveat Academics; also listed for Subject Resources (the family mode, catalog title Spaced Repetition Study Planner).
Support: Questions, a correction or a request: team@caveatacademic.com.

The reviews land 1, 3, 7, 14 and 30 days after the first study session. A common schedule, not a law: what matters is that the gaps grow.

How to use it

Add each thing you are learning as its own topic: one chapter, one skill or one set of terms. Enter the day you first studied it and the test date if you have one.
Open the planner each day and do what is under Due today. Start from memory; the card tells you how.
Rate each review. Got it moves the topic to a longer gap, Shaky repeats the gap and Blank starts it over tomorrow.
Look at the calendar for heavy days. If a day is over your limit, review something a day early.
Print the calendar, or save the calendar file so the reviews show up on your phone.

Plan the reviews

Why spacing works, and how the plan is built

Two of the best-supported study techniques, turned into dates.

The rules of the plan

The ladder: reviews come 1, 2, 4, 7 and 16 days apart, which puts them 1, 3, 7, 14 and 30 days after the first study session.
Ratings: Got it moves up one step. Shaky stays on the same step, so the same gap repeats. Blank goes back to the first step, and the next review is tomorrow.
Tests: nothing is scheduled on or after the test day, and the day before gets a last look. After the fifth step, a topic with a test still ahead comes back every 30 days.
Late reviews: a missed review moves to today and the gaps after it are counted from the day you do it.
No test date: the topic is finished after five reviews.

What the research says

Spreading study over time beats the same minutes in one sitting. A review of more than 300 experiments found the spacing effect across many kinds of material and delays.
The best gap depends on how long you need to remember. In one large study the best gap was about 20 to 40 percent of a one-week delay and about 5 to 10 percent of a one-year delay, so longer goals call for longer gaps.
Pulling an answer out of memory strengthens it more than reading it again. That is why each review starts with the notes closed.
A 2013 review of ten study techniques rated practice testing and distributed practice the two most useful. Rereading and highlighting rated low.
The exact days are a convention. Research supports widening or even gaps; it does not single out 1, 3, 7, 14 and 30. Cramming the night before works for tomorrow and fades fast.

The worked example, checked when the page is built, with dates set from the day you load it. Cell respiration was first studied nine days ago and reviewed twice, so its third review was due two days ago: it shows as two days late, then comes back in a week, with a last look the day before the test in twelve days. Systems by elimination was studied yesterday, so its first review is today, then in 2 and 6 days, and the day before its test. Causes of World War I has no test date: after today it has one review left, sixteen days out, and then it has finished the ladder. Today adds up to 40 minutes against a 45-minute limit.

Sources

Nicholas J. Cepeda, Harold Pashler, Edward Vul, John T. Wixted and Doug Rohrer, "Distributed Practice in Verbal Recall Tasks: A Review and Quantitative Synthesis," Psychological Bulletin 132, no. 3 (2006): 354–380.
Nicholas J. Cepeda, Edward Vul, Doug Rohrer, John T. Wixted and Harold Pashler, "Spacing Effects in Learning: A Temporal Ridgeline of Optimal Retention," Psychological Science 19, no. 11 (2008): 1095–1102.
Henry L. Roediger III and Jeffrey D. Karpicke, "Test-Enhanced Learning: Taking Memory Tests Improves Long-Term Retention," Psychological Science 17, no. 3 (2006): 249–255.
John Dunlosky, Katherine A. Rawson, Elizabeth J. Marsh, Mitchell J. Nathan and Daniel T. Willingham, "Improving Students’ Learning With Effective Learning Techniques," Psychological Science in the Public Interest 14, no. 1 (2013): 4–58.
Harold Pashler and others, Organizing Instruction and Study to Improve Student Learning (NCER 2007-2004), Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education: Recommendation 1, space learning over time.
Hermann Ebbinghaus, Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology (1885), and Sebastian Leitner, So lernt man lernen (1972): the forgetting curve, and the box system that moves material to longer gaps when it is remembered and back when it is not.

A study planning tool. The schedule is a rule of thumb built on research about spacing and practice testing; it does not predict a grade. The worked example is made up. The forgetting curve in the drawing at the top of the page is a sketch of the idea, not data. Support: team@caveatacademic.com.