Common student complaint:  "my notes are in no particular order, I don't know where to start looking for that piece of information. In fact I don't even remember taking these notes in the first place. I may as well start again from the beginning."

Educational experts' advice:  students should be encouraged to organise their own notes, as the act of organising increases their memory for those notes.

RecallPlus  pushes students to take notes in a manner similar to the way the mind organises information.

Common student complaint:  "I have pages and pages of written notes. The words just blur together on the page, I wish my notes were more exciting."

Teachers viewpoint: Students must be continually stimulated or they will fail to absorb the information being presented to them.

Educational experts' advice:  The 'Memory Wizards' of the world commonly use multiple senses when they remember things. Most of the brain is geared towards interpreting and remembering visual stimuli. It therefore comes as little surprise that experimentally, visual memory is the strongest sense memory in most of the population.

RecallPlus has the ability to add in fact any kind of content you like to a Chapter of notes.
Copy and paste images, webpages, text instantly into RecallPlus and they will be shown appropriately.
RecallPlus also has drawing tools, so if you wish to doodle on your notes it is easy.
You can add video and other file types to cards and they will 'play' when clicked on.

Common student complaint:  "I can always remember the lyrics of my favourite songs. I wish I could learn coursework as easily!"

Educational experts' advice:  the greater the number of senses associated with a memory, the easier it will be to recall the information.

RecallPlus can in 30 seconds, record 20 seconds of your voice as an MP3 and add it to your notes!! It even has MP3 editing facilities!!
Stimulating the aural as well as the visual senses is useful for improving retention.

Common student complaint:  I've been studying all morning and I feel tired. Even though I keep reading the material, I don't think any of it is going in.

Educational experts' advice:  It is a proven fact that those who take regular breaks when studying will study more efficiently.

The Primacy and Recency effects are the observed improvement in memory for things that were shown first and last during a learning period.
If you simply continue to learn continuously, your retention of the information you are trying to learn drops steadily. However, just before and just after you take a short (5 mins) break, your memory is much better.
Therefore, if you take a short break every 30 to 60 minutes, you will find you remember more.

RecallPlus reminds students when to take short breaks to keep them in an optimal state.

Common student complaint:  "I tested myself five times yesterday until I knew the information perfectly, so why have I forgotten it today?"

Educational experts' advice:  if you test yourself at optimal intervals, you will require to do fewer revisions in order to remember the information.

The Spacing Effect: "The benefit of repetition is much more substantial when repetitions are spaced (i.e. separated by other events or items of information)."

Thomas, C. et al. The Effect of Spacing Repetitions on the Recognition Memory of Young Children and Adults. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 1991, 51: 123-138

Rather than constantly revising the information, RecallPlus alerts you at optimal intervals and tests you on the information you have entered into the program.

Common student complaint:  I spent a long time studying but didn't know how well I had learned the information until I started answering the questions in the exam. There were some areas I wished I had worked on a bit more, but by then it was too late.

The average student is only tested once: in the exam.

Educational experts' advice:  Imagine trying to do a 100m sprint without a watch. You would have no idea if your performance was improving with each trial and thus it would be difficult to remain motivated. Feedback is essential for learning because it gives you a feel for doing something right.

RecallPlus provides students with constant feedback so they REALLY know how they are going.........when they are wasting time and when they are not!

Common student complaint:  I seem to waste so much time when I'm studying. I'm either daydreaming, looking for notes I have mislaid or going over material I already know well when I should really just be concentrating on that which I don't know.

RecallPlus has the following features to overcome these problems: 

• Ongoing testing makes sure that students really are concentrating as they go. It becomes quickly apparent if they are not!
• Encourages students to take breaks to keep them in an optimum state for studying.
• Tests more frequently on the information which has been forgotten and less frequently on the information already learned.

Complaint from teacher:  my students tend to keep going over the material they already know because this reassures them they have learnt something. If they had a structure for getting back to the parts they had forgotten they could avoid wasting time like this.

By rating each piece of information based on how well you remembered it, RecallPlus is able to test you more frequently on the information you forgot and less frequently on that which you remembered. You will then be able to remember more information but will have spent less time studying!

Common student complaint:  I already revised this material for the exam last month but I have lost all my notes from then, so now I will just have to start again from the beginning.

RecallPlus overcomes this problem by having its own easy search facility.
Even if you have 70 chapters of notes with 100 Cards of information in each, RecallPlus will make short work of searching them!

Common complaint from teachers:  what many students fail to realise is that learning is a skill which itself must be learned if it is to be done properly.

Educational experts' advice:  students who have a knowledge of the basic principles of learning theory can save themselves time and greatly increase the effectiveness of their study.

RecallPlus offers general study tips and learning information.
The Memory toolbox includes memory 'tools', memory 'tasks' (how to use the tools in real life situations) and finally memory exercises. These all extend the student in parallel with their learning experiences using RecallPlus. Between the feedback they receive studying with RecallPlus and the Memory Toolbox's learning overview, they will significantly improve their learning and study efficiency!