This mode is ideally suited for learning material over a significant time span - months to years. A perfect application for this mode would be learning and maintaining the vocabulary for a foreign language.

 

This system was popularized by Sebastian Leitner in his work "So lernt man lernen" (Thus one learns to learn), published in 1972. His idea involved a series of physical boxes, into which were placed standard flashcards. When a card was answered correctly, it was promoted to the next higher numbered box. If a card was answered incorrectly it was moved back to the first box.  He surmised that the interval for reviewing each higher numbered box could be increased over the interval used for the previous box, based on his observation that facts that were reinforced periodically were retained for a longer and longer period before forgetting - the period increasing with each reinforcement.

 

We've made our Leitner implementation much simpler to use than those of our competitors.  You can easily vary both the number of 'boxes' and the interval between boxes using the Options|Q&A Modes|Mode Specific Settings after selecting Leitner Mode in Options|Q&A Modes. See Leitner Mode Specific Settings for specifics and strategies for using these controls.

 

If you add your Leitner-mode files to the Subject Outline, you'll see the review date of the file as dictated by the Q&A pair requiring the EARLIEST review according to the file's current settings. You can work on the file before this date by checking the Allow Pairs To Be Asked Before Due box in Options|Q&A Modes|Mode Specific Settings.

 

When reviewing in Leitner mode, Q&A pairs are asked lowest box first, in the order that they are due for review. This saves the user from having to decide which box he should review, when, etc. Simply check the review date in the Subject Outline and open the file on or after that date and handle whatever Q&A pairs are due for review.  Don't get around to it for a few days - no problem - the program will present the Q&A pairs most needing to be reviewed first.

 

All Q&A pairs in box 1 are constantly 'due' (except pairs missed during the current day which are held off until the following day if that option is selected in Leitner Mode Specific Settings) so the file will show as due for review on the current date (or a date in the past) if there are still Q&A pairs remaining in box 1 - i.e. they haven't been correctly answered yet.

 

If you have, or are adding, a lot of new pairs in your study file, consider enabling the box 0 "pool" feature described in detail in Leitner Mode Specific Settings. This will allow you to manage the number of new pairs that you need to work through each day instead of having a daunting number of pairs that are "due" immediately.

 

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