Hi, I'm Eric and I'm the founder and lead developer of Prepform.<p>A high-quality education helped me pursue my interests and achieve my goals. I started Prepform so students of all backgrounds have access to the same kind of education.<p>I grew up in Southern California, surrounded by dozens of SAT prep programs, and I swear I must have gone to all of them. Different programs followed different styles and techniques, but the strategy they shared was to create a study plan and review mistakes.<p>A study plan is
taking a diagnostic test,<p>setting a target score,<p>creating a study schedule,<p>identifying mistakes, and finally<p>reviewing those mistakes.<p>I wanted to take this structure and optimize it with machine learning, while accounting for elements of human learning and memory.
I'm a big fan of SuperMemo, a memorization technique developed by Piotr Wozniak, where you review material just as you're about to forget it. Cognitive psychology tells us human forgetting follows a pattern, but Piotr quantified this behavior to identify the precise moment forgetting happens.<p>The goal was to build on his research with AI and tailor it to not only test prep but to the individual student, and make it the engine of the study plan.<p>The result is Blended Prep, which guides students to internalize knowledge rather than memorize material, and gives them the best chance to ace their next exam.<p>I'm so excited to share this with the HN community, and would love to know what you think. You can try it out at <a href="https://prepform.com" rel="nofollow">https://prepform.com</a>. Thanks for reading.
The concept sounds interesting.<p>My kids use DuoLingo and Khan Academy for learning and their methods seem effective. Would you consider yourself a “DuoLingo for exams”, or is your learning philosophy different enough that that’s not accurate?<p>Some feedback on the site:<p>1) I’d suggest replace “Remember everything” with something less absolute. I don’t that’s a realistic goal and had me doubting the rest of what I was reading. Humans forget sometimes and that’s OK.<p>2) A lot of words were underlined. I thought they were links.<p>Good luck with your business!
Hey I've been playing with your app, I'm very excited about it! But, it seems like the site is pretty buggy, having just tried it on a few different browsers. Specifically, the test review doesn't show relevant information that was available while taking the exam, (i.e. the constants are missing, not even whitespace where they should be). I could share screenshots of what I'm seeing with you if you like. Also, it keeps saying I have 20 tasks for today- I click and it has me take another exam, and afterward, I still have 20 tasks to do.<p>That said I'm getting a lot out of taking these exams and I'm very excited about this project!
<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28309645" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28309645</a>
<a href="https://westurner.github.io/hnlog/#comment-28309645" rel="nofollow">https://westurner.github.io/hnlog/#comment-28309645</a> :<p>Re: Phonemic awareness and Phonological awareness,<p>> <i>What are some of the more evidence-based (?) (early literacy,) reading curricula? OTOH: LETRS, Heggerty, PAL: </i><p>> <i>Which traversals of a curriculum graph are optimal or sufficient?</i><p>> <i>You can add <a href="https://schema.org/about" rel="nofollow">https://schema.org/about</a> and <a href="https://schema.org/educationalAlignment" rel="nofollow">https://schema.org/educationalAlignment</a> Linked Data to your [#OER] curriculum resources to increase discoverability, reusability.</i><p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24527589" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24527589</a>
<a href="https://westurner.github.io/hnlog/#comment-24527589" rel="nofollow">https://westurner.github.io/hnlog/#comment-24527589</a> :<p>>> <i>A bottom-up (topologically sorted) computer science curriculum (a depth-first traversal of a Thing graph) ontology would be a great teaching resource.</i><p>>> <i>One could start with e.g. "Outline of Computer Science", add concept dependency edges, and then topologically (and alphabetically or chronologically) sort.</i><p>>> <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outline_of_computer_science" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outline_of_computer_science</a> </i><p>>> <i>There are many potential starting points and traversals toward specialization for such a curriculum graph of schema:Things/skos:Concepts with URIs.</i><p>> <i><a href="https://westurner.github.io/hnlog/" rel="nofollow">https://westurner.github.io/hnlog/</a> ... Ctrl-F "interview", "curriculum"</i><p>OpenBadges as Blockcerts for Q12 competencies
Some feedback:<p>1. Good that you can try it out without signing in.<p>2. Bad that the screen where you select the things is so complicated.<p>3. Bad that the maximum # questions is 0, even though I've chosen options that have questions (see screenshot)<p><a href="https://i.imgur.com/ZMfZwHs.png" rel="nofollow">https://i.imgur.com/ZMfZwHs.png</a>
the website and the idea look great overall.
But compared to Kahn academy I miss that each test (set of question) is not focused on one single new concept.<p>When using Kahn academy, the sequencing is basically<p>1- watch video about 1 new concept you do not already know
2- try to do a bunch of question about that new concept to make sure you master it
3- if not go back to step #1 but if you master it (progress to the next concept)<p>It feels more like a video game where you unlock level sequentially and it is more fun.