Quizlet

Quizlet

Type of site	Memorization Tool
Available in	English
Owner	Brainflare Inc.
Created by	Andrew Sutherland
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 September 2009, the site had more than half a million registered users and more than one 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."

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

The "Familiarize" mode lets users handle terms in a way similar to flashcards. Users are able to virtually flip cards over to reveal definitions and terms or view both the definition and term side by side.

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