Quizlet

Quizlet

Type of site	Memorization Tool
Available in	English
Owner	Quizlet LLC
Created by	Andrew Sutherland
Revenue	Quizlet Plus
URL	Quizlet.com
Commercial	Yes
Registration	Optional

Quizlet is an online memorization tool that was originally conceived in October 2005 by Andrew Sutherland with himself as the lone developer. Since its initial release in January 2007, Quizlet has been managed by a development crew that Sutherland named "Brainflare Inc." and as of April 2010, the site has been open to the public for over a thousand days, has almost one million registered users, and has had more than two million flashcard sets created.

History

Quizlet began as an idea that popped into Andrew Sutherland's head when he was assigned by his French teacher to memorize animal names in French. After realizing the daunting task of mechanical memorization, Sutherland sat down to write code for a program to aid him in memorization. However, these first lines of code were scrapped and then rewritten meticulously and carefully over the course of 420 days by Sutherland himself. In January 2007, Quizlet was released to the public.

In November 2009, Dave Margulius who worked with Sutherland as an investor and advisor for Quizlet since 2007, was named CEO of Quizlet. Sutherland would remain the President of Quizlet and CTO. In addition to hiring CEO Dave Margulius, Sutherland also announced the opening of Quizlet's office in San Francisco which would hold his small team of employees which work on Quizlet every day.

In January 2010, Quizlet announced that they had hired their first full-time developer and product manager, Phil Freo. Andrew Sutherland, the creator of Quizlet said "I'm very excited about this because Phil is a talented developer and can really help step up the pace of innovation at Quizlet." Sutherland also mentioned that in 2010 there will be many cool features and products that will be directly from Phil's work. Andrew also spoke about the future of Quizlet "We're finally going to launch an upload-to Quizlet images feature in the next few days. We're also going to restart our work on getting the Quizlet interface translated into multiple versions, which I've been wanting to do for a long time. And a lot of you have asked about iPhone and other mobile devices, to which I say we're still working on it, but it's one thing we really want to focus on this year." Also Andrew stepped on his goal for Quizlet "Overall, our goal is to grow Quizlet as big as we can this year. We want to reach as many students as possible, because we think Quizlet is great and could be helpful to a lot more students."

In February 2010, Quizlet launched "Quizlet Plus", which gives the user the ability to upload and add their own images to their flash cards to study. This option also gives the user to create unlimited groups and have no ads. But there is a cost to this at a price of $10.

In March 2010, Quizlet launched a new design of the set page. The goal of the new design was to make the set page more intuitive and more visually appealing. The major change that the site made to the set page was to get rid of the Familiarize mode and build it right into the set page itself. After the new design was launched an update was made to add a button that will shuffle the flashcards that are built into the set page.

Study modes

As a memorization tool, Quizlet lets registered users create "sets" of terms customized for their own needs. These sets of terms can then be studied under several study modes.

Familiarize

This mode is shown automatically on the set's main page. This study mode is very similar to traditional paper flash cards. One side of the card is shown, and clicking on the "Click to flip" button which shows the other side of the card. The option is available to show both sides and this option will divide the screen in two with the term and definition shown on the same page. Another option is available to see the Familiarize feature in full screen.In addition if you wanted to shuffle the order of the flash cards this option is also included.

Learn

In this mode, users are either prompted with the term or definition and is prompted to define the other. Terms/definitions that are incorrectly defined are recycled until the user gets it correct, making this mode of study very effective.

Test

The "Test" mode lets users create randomly generated tests through selecting options to customize a test so that the test may comprise of, for instance, only multiple choice questions and matching questions.

Scatter

This mode is a matching game where terms and definitions are randomly scattered around the screen. The goal is to match terms with their appropriate definitions in the least amount of time possible.

Space race

"Space Race" is a mode that allows players to test their typing skills while memorizing. The object of this mode is to type the matching word or definition before a scrolling word or definition leaves the screen.

Voice race

This mode of study is only available for terms that only contain letters and is developed in association with Spoken Language Systems (SLS), a branch of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. When a definition is provided, the user speaks the term and voice recognition software determines if the spoken term is correct.

See also

• Flashcards