Who Does It Better? Shiken or Quizlet?

Quizlet has been around since 2005 and is probably the most well-known flashcards app that allows students to study smarter and create their own flashcards and study sets for popular subjects.

Shiken, meanwhile, features a huge database of questions, including flashcards, and allows you to create your own questions and way more.

Shiken is as much about mindfulness and productivity as it is about learning. Anxious, burned-out students are unlikely to perform well in exams, so Shiken encourages a positive mindset, and regular breaks, and provides useful tools like notes, goal setting and more.

The apps are quite different, making it tricky for students and teachers to choose just one.

So, let’s look a little more closely at the features to help you decide.

What Is Quizlet Good For?

The original idea for Quizlet was to help students create flashcards to memorize vocabulary for language learning. The learning science behind Quizlet is that you can create flashcards, study flashcards and take practice tests to memorize facts. Flashcards use active recall and spaced repetition. When you see a question you practice recall, turn flashcards over and reveal the correct answer to master key concepts.

Quizlet has since expanded beyond flashcards with the Quizlet app, Quizlet plus and Quizlet live.

What Is Free In The Quizlet App?

Quizlet mainly focuses on high-school students. Once you've signed up and login to Quizlet you select your school and the subjects you are studying for. You can then search through flashcards created by other students or try some simple multiple choice questions using Quizlet Learn or match flashcard terms and definitions.

You can create a study set which is basically a selection of flashcards and you can organize your study sets into folders. There are also some textbook solutions to help you find answers within the study app when in class.

And that's pretty much it. If you want to take a practice test or track your learning progress then you'll need to pay.

Is Quizlet Free?

Quizlet is partially free. You can sign-up for a free version and access flashcards with limits. For more advanced features you'll need to buy Quizlet plus. Students used to love Quizlet as, prior to 2022, it was free to create as many flashcards as you liked.

How Much Is Quizlet Plus?

Quizlet Plus is a monthly or annual subscription and costs £6.99 ($7.99)/month or £31.99 ($35.99)/year. For more advanced features, like tracking progress, expert explanations and ad-free offline access on the Quizlet app, you'll need to pay.

What Are The Quizlet Plus Premium Features?

• Expert Solutions
• Quizlet Learn: More question types
• Practice tests
• Custom study sets with images
• Ad-free and offline access to the Quizlet app

The Quizlet teacher subscription offers Quizlet Live which is an interactive classroom game where teachers sort flashcards and classmates study questions in class.

What Are the Limitations of Quizlet?

Quizlet has been a favourite amongst students and teachers for quite some time. However, it's no-longer the only app that provides study material and the best flashcards for the most popular subjects. Some recent changes have not been received well with many new features bolted on top of the core flashcard system.

Memorization Vs Understanding

The biggest issue with Quizlet is that while flashcards are great for memorization they don't necessarily help you to deeply understand a topic. Quizlet was created for memorizing language vocab not deep understanding. Learning science backed study tools have moved on since 2005 with learning apps like Shiken optimizing for encoding, active recall and helping learners prepare for upcoming tests more efficiently and effectively.

Limited Free Version

Before 2022, the free version of Quizlet was ideal for students looking for independent study options. However, the latest update has placed the most popular features behind a paywall, meaning only premium users can access features like tracking your progress.

Some Performance Issues

According to the Quizlet subreddit, Quizlet users have reported a multitude of bugs, including having to start all over again when they get a single question wrong, and out-of-date answers. Users have also complained about how the annual subscription automatically renews. Though the help center explains how this can be done in your account settings.

Is There a Better Alternative To Quizlet?

When it comes to ease of use, Shiken is simply the best studying app, making it simple for teachers and students to see what they’ve done and what they still need to do and unlike Quizlet tracking your progress across multiple different questions types, study modes and timed games is free. 

Key Features of Shiken Vs Quizlet

Live Games & Challenges

In Shiken you can play solo or play live or asynchronously with friends. This is great for gamifying your learning and to help teachers boost engagement.

Mindfulness

Studies have proven how mindfulness techniques can be incredibly effective when it comes to improving memory retention. Shiken's Study Buddies and mindfulness integrations use social science to integrate well-being with study tools.

Question Store

Shiken boasts over 75,000 expert-created questions and a selection of past papers and drill practice problems to provide learners with formative assessment ahead of test day.

With Shiken you can create your own questions from a range of question types, not just flashcards, and you can search the Shiken Store for study sets created by other users.

Set Goals And View Progress

When you have a goal in mind, you are far more likely to make progress. Shiken allows learners to set goals to boost engagement and learning and see where they stand in relation to that target.

Take Notes

One feature that is simple is the fact that you can add notes to questions. This is great if you want to take notes as you learn without switching apps or you want to save a question to a note. This is not something that Quizlet currently offers.

Video Courses

Take learning a step further with video courses dedicated to a single topic. These lessons are broken up with questions to ensure the students have learned the key ideas and provide another form of media to help with memory retention.

Ai Learning

Shiken features an Ai-powered tutor that both learners and teachers can chat with at anytime to aid learning and reduce teacher workload. On paid plans both teachers and students can use Shiken's AI to generate everything from questions, to notes and lesson plans in an instant.

Monetize Your Knowledge

Whether you are a learner, teacher or school you can sign-up for a Shiken Creator account and sell your own learning products and courses on the Shiken store.

Learner Management

Unlike Quizlet, Shiken has learner management at its heart with teachers able to track learner progress, organize learners by groups and set assignments.

So, Which Platform is Better?

Quizlet has been around for a while and while memorization is great for students learning language vocab that same learning method doesn't translate to all other subjects or more advanced learners. Shiken includes elements of audience engagement, multiple question types and is more of a learning platform that can be used in class as well as at home or in work for professional learners.

Why not decide for yourself by setting up your free account on Shiken today?

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