Flashcard computer aided learning system

Software	OO language such as PHP or JSP, plus HTML and CSS
Covers	Databases, web-based interfaces, possibly AI, possibly statistics, optionally mobile app development
Skills Required	Programming, interest in artificial intelligence, interest in psychology of learning
Challenge	Conceptual ?? Technical ??? Programming ???

Brief Description

A popular and very effective way of learning all sorts of facts and recognition skills is using flashcards: cards with a question, or a picture or a word to learn, on one side and the answer on the other. You answer the question and get immediate feedback (which is best for learning) on what is the right answer. The challenge of this project is to computerize this - both to remove the need to make or carry physical cardboard flashcards, and to exploit the ability of the computer to do calculations to optimize the order in which questions are presented to make learning as effective as possible.

The project will involve implementing

Card presentation system. A web database system for choosing and presenting a sequence of questions from a database (or other data store) of possible questions on some topic or other.
User interface. What the user sees (probably but not necessarily on a web page). The user sees a question, and answers it (usually simply in his or her mind), then asks for the answer (a system-timed presentation might be an option), then tells the system whether or not he or she got the question right. For some types of question, it might be helpful to enable the users to provide more information than just right or wrong.
Content creation interface. Ideally the system should enable the user to select one of a range of question sets that can simply be plugged in. The project should include an interface for creating a set of questions with all the metadata the system needs to use them effectively, and storing them as a plug and play module.
Card selection algorithm. To start with, the questions can be chosen in sequence or randomly. But where this project gets intellectually interesting is in choosing questions to maximize learning effectiveness, for instance by repeating very soon a question that someone has got wrong, or by choosing easier questions if the user is getting things wrong and harder questions if they are consistently right. This requires some thought about appropriate metadata and algorithms that fit what is known about the psychology of learning.

Variants

Flashcard learning works best done frequently but for short periods - ideal for the odd five minutes waiting around. So it's an obvious thing to want to do with a smartphone or other mobile device. So you might want to either build an Android or iPhone app, or optimize a web interface for small mobile devices.

This approach could be applied to learning words in foreign languages, learning to recognise different plants, practising arithmetic, naming organic molecules, learning properties of elements in chemistry, and so on. You might like to pick a primary application, but you should also try to design for as much generality as possible.

A software system could work better than cardboard for some uses of flashcards. Go and look at The Learning Scientists blogs and podcasts for some good ideas on how to learn stuff as well as how to do a distinctively different project. One idea is the Five-Sided-Flashcard: Side 1: Term or concept; Side 2: Definition; Side 3: Example, picture or story; Side 4: Similarities to other terms or concepts; Side 5: Differences from other terms or concepts. This like many other learning techniques is one where the student will probably gain more from making the flashcards than from having them afterwards.

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