Study your way

Eight ways to practise the same deck

Open any deck and the modes are all there. Progress is per deck, not per mode, so an hour in Speed Quiz counts towards the same set of cards a flashcard session did.

Flashcards

The straightforward one. Swipe through term and definition and mark what you already know, so the deck narrows to what you do not. Best for a first pass over new material.

Multiple Choice

Four options, one right definition. Recognition is easier than recall, which makes this the mode that keeps a deck moving when you are tired or when the material is still new.

Speed Quiz

A timer and as many questions as you can take. Speed is the point: a term you have to think about is a term you have not learned yet, and this mode makes that obvious.

Vocab Maze

A game with a deck inside it. Collect clues and power-ups, dodge the ghosts, then spell the word out. Spelling it rather than picking it is genuinely harder, and it is the mode that catches the words you only half know.

Type the Answer

The definition, an empty box, and nothing to pick from. Producing a term from memory is much harder than recognising it, and it is the mode that tells you whether you really know a deck or merely recognise it. Spelling is graded kindly — a typo is a nudge to try again, not a wrong answer.

Match the Pairs

A grid of terms and a shuffled grid of meanings, paired by tapping. It is a different kind of knowing again: not picking one answer from four and not producing it from nothing, but seeing which things go together. Only your first attempt on a card counts.

Use It

Short situations where the answer is what you would do, not what the word means — the closest to what a test actually asks. A deck has these once its owner has had them drafted and checked; nothing written by a machine reaches you unread.

Say It Your Way

Write what a card means in your own words and have it marked for understanding rather than wording — the hardest thing to fake. It is off unless a deck’s owner switches it on, because unlike every other mode it is marked one answer at a time, and each plan includes a monthly number of them.

Master a deck by a date

Tell Knovli when you need a deck learned and which days of the week you can actually study, and it builds a lesson plan and paces you through it.

Each lesson takes a slice of the deck: flashcards first for the new terms, then a quiz that mixes today’s terms with earlier ones so nothing quietly slips while you are busy learning the next batch. Miss a day and the plan reshuffles what is left rather than letting you fall behind it.

Those earlier terms are not picked at random. The ones you have been getting wrong come back far more often than the ones you keep getting right, so the review time lands where it is actually needed — and a term you have relearned steps back out of the rotation to make room for one that still needs the work.

Teachers can assign a whole mastery plan to a class, and every lesson in it becomes its own assignment with its own due date.

Proven — not just studied

Knovli keeps a second, stricter measure alongside your progress. A card counts as Proven once you have got it right in two different ways — recognising it, recalling it, connecting it, applying it and explaining it yourself are five separate kinds of knowing, and doing well at one of them is not the same as knowing the card.

It is deliberately hard to game. Typing an answer only counts if you produce it; matching only counts on your first attempt at a card, and the last pair in a matching round earns nothing at all, because with one term and one meaning left there is nothing to choose between. The deck page shows how much of a deck is Proven, and your progress page shows it across your whole library.

Proven and Mastered are not the same thing. Mastered is what you tick when you decide you know a card; Proven is what Knovli can see for itself.

And you choose how high the bar sits. Every deck can be set to Quick (right once, any one way), Standard (right in two different ways, the normal setting) or Rigorous (three different ways, and it has to survive a review days later). There are several kinds of knowing — recognising a card, typing it from memory, matching it up, using it in a situation, and explaining it in your own words. A teacher can set it for a class deck instead.

Separately, you can say which kinds have to count — that typing a card out must be one of the ways, say, or that both typing and matching must be. That sits on top of the bar rather than replacing it: “two different ways, and one of them has to be typing” is stricter than “two different ways”, never easier.

Progress that adds up

Every study session earns XP, and XP moves you up a rank ladder and fills in a badge wall. A day streak counts consecutive days you have studied, which is a blunt instrument and a very effective one.

Your progress page pulls it together: XP over the week, your current streak and rank, per-mode statistics, and — if you are in a class — where you sit on the class leaderboard.