Hey @Parker , you bring up a good point. After doing some comparing & contrasting, I see that these types of cards are present for glycolysis & the citric acid cycle. The ones for glycolysis all include “The above reaction is from glycolysis” in the Text. One half of them will then ask for the enzyme that catalyzes the reaction & the other half will ask “This reaction requires…” - asking for the cofactors only (nids: 1556597012755, 1556597547054, 1556597569744, 1556597641771, 1556597863887 & 1556597959409). In the case of TCA, the same is true but the latter half (which includes nids: 1556661825545, 1556661893912, 1556661931848, 1556661960820, 1556662038881 & 1556662098201) asks for both the reactants, products & cofactors - with the exception of 1556661825545 & 1556662038881. The thing about some of these latter half cards is they include an image that gives away the reactants/products.
I think knowing cofactors, reactants/products & the responsible enzyme are all very relevant to the MCAT for these two pathways: glycolysis & the TCA cycle. When I used this deck to study, I remember there being image occlusions for glycolysis & the TCA, testing their reactants/products. I don’t see that in the deck anymore but let me know if you do. If not, here’s what we can do to have uniformity: take out the images in the latter halves that I cited above for both glycolysis & the TCA and replace them with the reaction’s enzyme so people have a reference point for which reaction this is. Then, we’d include the cofactors, products & reactants in the cloze.
I know this is a long response so let me know if I can clarify anything!
I believe there are no image occlusions in this deck, only cloze deletions. In my personal deck I use image occlusions in the way you described for many pathways! I think it works great! I was surprised by this deck not using any image occlusions (that I’ve yet seen), as pathways seem like a great use case. Is there a reason for the lack of image occlusion? Does the step deck use image occlusion?
The cards do give away the reactant/product in the image. For each step in the pathway, I can see two options.
-
Two cards per step, like you described.
a. Show enzyme, have user give cofactors, products, and reactants.
b. Show reactant → product, have user give enzyme. -
Three cards per step.
a. Show enzyme, have user give product and reactant.
b. Show product, reactant, and enzyme, have user give cofactors.
c. Show reactant → product, have user give enzyme.
I prefer 2 (if image occlusion is not on the table). It breaks the question down into smaller chunks that are easier to manage. Say you have a card, in the style of the first, where you are given succinate dehydrogenase and are asked to recall: the reactant is succinate, product is fumarate, and cofactor is FAD → FADH2. You can always remember succinate to fumarate but struggle to remember FAD → FADH2. Pushing “again” on this card requires reviewing and remembering everything, which I found would be a slower review and the first half of the card is not needed to be reviewed again, just the second half. By splitting them up, the user can focus more on the part they might struggle with, while still letting the algorithm show them the part they got right when it is designed to.
I know card count is something to consider as well, but I think time reviewing total, splitting the steps into 3 cards, will ultimately have less total time reviewing while focusing on the smaller chunks of information an individual might struggle with.
Completely agree! Option 2 would be ideal in light of review times. I don’t know why image occlusion isn’t applied for these cards. @Ahmed7 do we have any protocol against using image occlusion in the case of pathways like glycolysis & TCA?
Are there any image occlusion cards in the deck?
We are planning to introduce new note type features in the future that would allow us to do more with note types
I searched for note types using “note:__” in Browse but there aren’t image occlusion cards. I do remember them being in the original miledown deck
I think for now we don’t have plans to add image occlusion, however you can ask Ty or Ethan and see what they also think
I’ll go ahead & ask them as well
Hey @Ahmed7 , I heard back from Ethan and he thinks image occlusion, especially using 1by1, would be good for these cards. There’s a couple ways I’m thinking we could go about this. My first thought is to have separate image occlusion notes (which would be 1by1) that each cover only one “aspect” of the process. For example, we’d test for only cofactors in one note, test for enzymes in another and test for reactants & products in a third. Our current cards do the same but they are broken up into each “step” of the process. Onebyone would allow the same but users would go through all steps within one note.
In the end, it’s not that our current cards for glycolysis, etc don’t work. It’s just that image occlusion would be more convenient.
Do you think we should hold off on doing this until later? I’m happy to start the process of doing this now. Either way works for me.
This sounds good!
Would all cards still remain however? So people can choose what they prefer to do?
I think you should poll the community by sending an update to everyone.
You can introduce yourself, tell everyone what you’ve been working on, what will be worked on in the future, then make a poll at the end asking if this is something people would want and add examples via pictures.
This way you will at least get a bigger sample size of what people would want.
You can use the Anking step deck email updates as a template: đź‘‘ AnKing Step Deck Update #3
Sorry for the late response I’m drowning in school work 
Since they’d have to manually suspend one or the other if all cards were still available, I’m thinking we’ll go with one approach. Lmk what you think
I’ll be sure to send out that poll
One thing - how do you go about checking note updates, subscriber count increases, etc within a given date range? For note updates, I can only think of doing it manually & scrolling back to a particular date to count how many pages of suggestions there are but I’m sure there’s a more efficient way
For note updates, ask Andrew in the slack to see if they can set up a metabase for the mcat deck. Its like a leaderboard with all the stats
For subscribers, i take the last update and this update, then see the difference to check how many people subscriber. I believe for the first update i just wrote how many subscribers we currently have, the second update you’ll be able to see how many new subscribed