We looked at what happens in a learner’s first ten minutes on DigiBacc — and changed three things.
Your first sessions are gentler
Until now, your very first card could be anything: a fill-in-the-gap that wants the exact spelling, a flashcard asking you to rate yourself, a speaking task on card three. That is a lot to meet in the first minute. From today, new cards arrive in stages:
- Your first 20 cards are true/false and multiple choice — recognise, tap, move on.
- From 20 answers, fill-in-the-gap and matching join in.
- From 60, flashcards with self-rating and markschemes.
- From 120, diagram cards and the listening and speaking tasks in the language courses.
Only new cards follow the stages. Anything you have already answered comes back for review whatever its format — that is the whole point of spaced repetition. And if you pick a topic on purpose, you get that topic.
The practice screen belongs to the card
Choosing your units, filtering by topic, answering a card: on all of these screens the dashboard now steps aside, so you never see yesterday’s subject or another subject’s open mistakes above the thing you are doing. The “open mistakes” counter itself now counts your chosen subjects only. And the way back — the button with your subject’s name at the top — is a proper button now, not a grey whisper.
Why we changed this
Across all learners, true/false cards are answered correctly 75 % of the time and fill-in-the-gap cards 28 % of the time. Several people’s first session read “wrong, wrong, wrong” and ended after three cards. Nobody learns anything from that — least of all us. So the first minutes are now built to be won, and we log where sessions stop so we can see whether it worked. Tell us what you think.