Kalpana Kalpana (Editor)

Quizlet

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Type of site
  
Education

Website
  
quizlet.com

Area served
  
Worldwide

Founder
  
Andrew Sutherland

Quizlet httpsimgquizletcomkV2dzojpg

Available in
  
English, German, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese (BR)

Revenue
  
Freemium (ads/subscriptions)

Alexa rank
  
706 worldwide, 79 in the U.S.

Founded
  
October 2005, Albany, California, United States

Headquarters
  
San Francisco, California, United States

Profiles

Quizlet is an online learning tool created by Andrew Sutherland. It was originally conceived in October 2005 and released to the public in January 2007. Quizlet trains students via flashcards and various games and tests. As of November 2015, Quizlet has over 100 million user-generated flashcard sets and more than 40 million monthly visitors . It now ranks among the top 50 websites in the U.S. In 2016, Quizlet was recognized by SimilarWeb as the fastest growing US Education site in 2015. Quizlet holds annual language competitions in French, German and Spanish.

Contents

History

Quizlet began as an idea conceptualized by Sutherland to memorize 111 animal names for his French class. After realizing the daunting task of mechanical memorization, he sat down to write code for a program to aid him in memorization. These first lines of code were scrapped and then rewritten meticulously over a course of 420 days. In October 2005, Quizlet was released to the public.

Until 2011, Quizlet shared staff and financial resources with the Collectors Weekly web site. In 2015, Quizlet announced raising $12 million from Union Square Ventures, Costanoa Venture Capital, Altos Ventures and Owl Ventures to expand its digital study tools and grow internationally.

In 2011, Quizlet added the ability to listen to content using text-to-speech. In August 2012, Quizlet released an app for the iPhone and iPad and shortly afterward released an app for Android devices.

On August 10th, 2016, Quizlet introduced a revamp to their website with a new design interface, along with a new logo and home page. Their mobile apps for iOS and Android also received a design interface update.

Study modes and games

As a memorization tool, Quizlet lets registered users create "sets" of terms customized for their own needs. These sets of terms can then be studied under several study modes.

Flash Cards
This mode is similar to paper flash cards. In it, users are shown a "card" for each term. Users can click to flip over the card, or use their arrow keys, and see the definition for that term.
Gravity
In this study mode, definitions scroll vertically down the screen in the shape of asteroids. The user must type the term that goes with the definition before it reaches the bottom of the screen. It is one of the 'Play' study modes. Gravity was adapted from a previous game, Space Race. You can pick the level of hardness and game type.
Learn
In this study mode, users are shown a term or definition and must type the term or definition that goes with what is shown. After entering their answer, users see if their answer was correct or not, and can choose to override the automatic grading and count their answer as right if needed.
Long-Term Learning
In this study mode, users are given a recommended study set based on whether or not they answer study set questions correctly. Repetition of terms answered incorrectly increases in frequency and a dashboard shows learning progress over time. The mode uses spaced repetition concepts to focus on longer-term retention and subject mastery versus shorter-term memorization.
Speller
In this mode, the term is read out loud and users must type in the term with the correct spelling.
Match
In this study mode, users are presented with a grid with terms scattered around it. Users drag terms on top of their associated definitions to remove them from the grid, and try to clear the grid in the fastest time possible. Micromatch is a related matching game geared towards mobile devices and devices with small screens. Users may access the Micromatch mode on non-mobile devices by manually editing the URL in Match mode to use "micromatch" instead of "match." Match was previously attributed as "Scatter". Though the name of the study mode changed, the game itself did not.

API

Quizlet provides an application programming interface that allows others to access Quizlet data. Available functions include uploading and downloading flashcards, modifying users' flashcards, and finding definitions created by Quizlet users.

References

Quizlet Wikipedia