By Rebecca Do & Maya Ekladious
Quizlet, an app synonymous with the democratization of education, has turned some of its most prominent features into a Quizlet Plus exclusive.
Unlimited “Learn” and “Test” rounds used to be free. Still, according to Quizlet, “unlimited access to ‘Learn’ and ‘Test’ modes is now available only with a Quizlet subscription, and ‘Gravity’ is no longer available.”
These options are not completely unavailable to the free Quizlet user; you have access to five free rounds of both “Learn” and “Test.” But do you really have the capacity to retain information after five rounds of practice?
Making these features paid as opposed to free can pose problems for students who use Quizlet as the baseline for their studying. Both the “Learn” and “Test” features are beneficial to students, and making them less accessible is doing nothing to help.
“This decision is very inconvenient, especially considering that Quizlet’s target audience are students who don’t typically have paying jobs or the ability to pay a monthly fee for a studying resource,” senior Michelle Nguyen said.
Many students who have been running to Quizlet the night before their tests for years, are now stopped by the new “upgrade.” “Learn” is one of the most important features of Quizlet, it ensures progress and effective studying. The questions progressively increase in difficulty. The questions’ difficulty is dependent on the previous questions you missed.
“My most used feature on Quizlet is ‘Learn’ because it forces me to learn everything,” senior Jasmin Newman said.
And what’s a better way to review before your test than taking a practice test with the “Test” feature?
“It’s understandable why they did this,” one may say. Yes, it is true that Quizlet has operated freely for about 16 years since it was released in 2005, but why now? Quizlet’s reasoning for making these changes is to “better reinvest in building great products that can help millions of students around the world.” But what does that actually mean?
If they truly want to invest in building great products that can help students, they can revert to their old model; they can and should go back to making all the learning options free for all.
When asked about whether or not they would consider paying for the new Quizlet “upgrade,” students seemed to oppose the idea.
“I would not consider paying for Quizlet because I don’t think it’s worth my money, especially when the internet has so many other resources handy and free,” Nguyen said.
Other great alternatives for Quizlet that have been proven to help students succeed are AnkiDroid, RemNote and Memrise.
RemNote and Anki are apps that you can take notes on and utilizes spaced repetition to help you learn. Memrise on the other hand is a language learning app that utilizes a similar “Test” feature that Quizlet has, only for free.
