Why a course sticks when a chat doesn't.
A chat answers the question in front of you. Curriculer follows four ideas from learning science, and writes each one down as a rule your tutor follows. Each links to its source.
1. Prerequisites
- Idea
- Knowledge is a graph of connected ideas. Advanced ideas depend on simpler ones, so a weak prerequisite makes later work harder than it needs to be.
- The rule
- Your course starts with the prerequisites and builds towards your goal. Before the first lesson of a new section, your tutor checks the sections it builds on. A set that needs practice, scores 2 or lower, or is overdue gets a short review first. You can always go straight on.
- Read more
- Justin Skycak, Thoughts about prerequisite knowledge.
2. Mastery
- Idea
- Mastery means you can use a prerequisite accurately and fluently enough to go on.
- The rule
- Nothing is marked mastered without an attempt your tutor checked, or a quiz score. Your own rating stops at 4 out of 5, so "mastered" means you showed it, not that it felt familiar. A gap sends you back to what it depends on, and if no lesson teaches it, your tutor offers to add one.
- Read more
- Justin Skycak, A brief history of mastery learning.
3. Automaticity
- Idea
- Working memory is small. When the basics take effort, less is left for the hard part.
- The rule
- The top score, 5, needs recall that is quick as well as correct. Clean but slow is a 4.
- Read more
- Justin Skycak, Developing automaticity.
4. Spaced retrieval
- Idea
- Recall fades without use. Rereading can feel familiar, but that doesn't always mean you can recall it.
- The rule
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You answer questions, exercises and quizzes, and each score sets the next review.
| Score | Next review |
| 0 or 1 | Tomorrow |
| 2 or 3 | In 3 days |
| 4 | In 7 days, or twice the last gap if that's longer |
| 5 | In 14 days, or twice the last gap if that's longer |
Clean reviews move further apart, up to 180 days. Difficult material comes back sooner.
It's the same idea Anki is built on: each review you get right pushes the next one further out.
- Read more
- Justin Skycak, Spaced repetition.
Coming soon