Frequently asked questions

Stu-Decks is a flashcard and study tools website for students. You can create your decks directly in the site, then study them four ways: flipping through Flashcards, mastering them in Build Understanding, checking yourself with a timed Practice Test, and racing the clock in Quick Match. You can keep decks to yourself or share them so classmates can study them too.

Yes, if you'd like to, and thank you! Donations help me pay for hosting and keep the site running for everyone. They're made through my Ko-fi page, which handles your donation securely.

You don't need an account to study a public deck. Your progress is kept temporarily and then deleted after you close the site. You do need an account to create decks and participate in voting on features.

An account is free, just use an email and a password of at least 8 characters.

1. Create an account and log in.
2. Click + Add deck and select your university and course name/number (if applicable)
3. Name your deck, pick Term and definition or Multiple choice, and fill in your cards (see Making flashcards).
4. Open the deck and pick a study mode.
5. Optional: untick "share with everyone" to keep your deck private

Search the public deck directory by university, course, and/or deck name. Add any public decks to your account dashboard to keep them accessible.

Click + Add deck. Name your deck and select the university and course name/number if applicable. Choose Term-Definition or Multiple Choice and fill in your flashcards.

• Term and definition - two boxes per card. These decks are studied both ways: term to definition and definition to term.
• Multiple choice - a question and 2 to 6 answer choices, with the correct one ticked.
• Put in order - a topic and 3 to 10 items to put in order (highest to lowest, first to last, etc)
• Sort into categories - a topic and 2-6 categories with up to 20 items per category

Press + Add card for each new card, then Save deck. If you close the tab part-way through, your unfinished deck is waiting when you come back.

Yes, with the selector at the top of the builder you can choose the default card type. You can switch any individual card to a different type and have multiple types of cards in the same deck.

Every box has to be filled in, and the message names the card to look at. The limits are:

• At least one card, and up to 1000 of them.
• Up to 1000 characters in any one box.
• Multiple-choice cards need 2 to 6 answer choices, no two the same, and one ticked as correct.

Up to 80 characters of letters, numbers, spaces and - _ . , & ( ) ' +. Each of your decks needs a different name. Please keep everything PG, I can and will delete any decks with explicit, vulgar, or inflammatory names.

When adding a deck (or later, from Manage → Edit name, university & course on the deck's page), start typing your university's name in the University box and pick it from the suggestions. Then enter your course number, like CSCE 121.

Tagged decks are grouped by course on your home page, and other students can find your shared decks by searching for the course.

The list of universities is imported from a public directory of over 10,000 schools worldwide, and students can't add to it. Try searching with fewer words, a different part of the name, or the school's web domain. If it's truly missing, email me at [email protected]

Just type it in. If no one has used that course number at your university yet, it's created when you save, and it's then suggested to everyone else at your school. Course numbers can be up to 20 characters

No, tagging is optional. Decks without a university and course are kept under Untagged, which is handy for things like certification exams, languages or personal study. To remove a tag later, clear the University box in Edit name, university & course.

Decks are shared by default, so other students can benefit from them: anyone can find a shared deck in search and study it, including visitors who haven't signed up. To keep a deck private (only you can see it), untick Share with everyone when adding it, or choose Manage → Make private later.

Other students can only study a shared deck. They can't edit, rename or delete it, and your email address is never shown to them.

Yes, any time, with Manage → Make private. It disappears from search and nobody else can open it, signed in or not.

No. Your test scores, Quick Match times and Build Understanding progress are always private to you, even on decks other people made.

Use Find shared decks on the home page:

• By course: pick your university, then your course, to see every deck shared for that course. The course list shows how many shared decks each one has.
• By name: type words from a deck's name, like midterm review, to search every shared deck. The closest matches come first.
• Combine both to search by name within one course, or pick Untagged decks to browse decks without a university.

Open one you want to keep and use + Add to my decks on its page - see below.

Open the deck from the search results and choose + Add to my decks at the top of its page. It then has its own tile on your home page, under Decks you've added, with your own progress and scores on it.

The deck still belongs to the student who made it: you can study it in every mode, but you can't edit, rename or delete it. You'll see an ⚠ Updated mark whenever its owner changes the cards, so you always know you are studying the current version.

Decks you simply start studying are added for you, so nothing you have put time into goes missing.

Flip through your cards one at a time. Click the card or press Space to flip it, and use ← → to move between cards. Shuffle mixes the order, and for term/definition decks you can choose whether the term or the definition is shown first.

The best mode for actually learning a deck. You study in short rounds (7 questions by default, 3 to 20 if you prefer) and every card works its way up to mastered:

1. First Stage: New cards are asked as multiple choice.
2. Second Stage: Get one right and it comes back as a recall question. Reveal the answer and mark whether you got it correct.
3. Third Stage: Type the definition for a term (or vice versa) or the right answer for a multiple choice question. Small typos are forgiven but you can mark that your were correct regardless.
4. Get through all three stages and the card is mastered.

A wrong answer moves the card back a stage and brings it back a few questions later. If the site marks a typed answer wrong but you know you were right, use Override: I was right. Term/definition decks are learned both ways (term → definition and definition → term). Your progress is saved after every answer.

A full multiple-choice test with one question for every card, in random order. Set a time limit (or 0 for no limit), answer the questions in any order, and submit when you're done. You'll get your score, how long you took, and a review showing the right answer for anything you missed.

You can retake just the questions you missed, or start a new full test. On term/definition decks each question randomly asks for the term or the definition, with wrong choices drawn from the rest of the deck, so every test is different. Your best score and full test history are saved on the deck's page.

A race against the clock: match up to 6 terms with their definitions as fast as you can. Click a tile and then its partner. Each wrong pair adds a 1-second penalty. Your best time is saved, so you can try to beat it.

Open the deck and choose Manage → Update deck. That reopens the builder on the deck's cards, so you can change them, add cards and delete cards, then Save changes. Build Understanding progress carries over for every card you didn't change, and your test history is kept. If your deck is public, anybody who added your deck to their dashboard is notified of the update.

Only a deck's owner can change its cards. When they do, every student who added that deck sees a ⚠ Updated mark on it on their home page, and a note when they open it. Progress you made in studying a public decks is not deleted when that deck is updated: your Build Understanding progress starts over only for the cards whose wording actually changed, and your test history and Quick Match times are kept. The mark goes away once you have opened the deck. You'll only be notified of an update to a deck if you have added it to your dashboard.

Open the deck and choose Manage → Remove from my decks. Your scores and progress for it are kept, so adding it to your dashboard again brings them back.

From the deck's Manage menu you can reset your Build Understanding progress, clear your test history, or clear your Quick Match times. On a publically shared deck, this only affects your own progress.

Manage → Delete deck permanently removes the deck, along with anyone else's progress if the deck was public. This is irreversable. If you just want to remove it from the public directory, you can make the deck private and any public records will be deleted while the deck is still accessible to only you.

It is kept on the site for your browser session only, under a random id in one strictly necessary cookie, and is never written to the site's database. Closing your browser ends your session and deletes your progress on any decks from that session

To keep your progress, sign up and it is saved to your account from then on. Signing up does not carry over progress from a guest session.

The site stores your email, your decks and your study progress so the site works for you. Read the full privacy policy for details.

Not at the moment. The site is not showing ads yet, so no ad cookies are being set on anyone's browser. Advertising is how I intend to cover maintenance and operational costs, so that may change.

If it does, ad cookies will only be used if you chose Accept all in the cookie banner, and I will name the advertising partner in the privacy policy and ask for your choice again first. If you choose Strictly necessary, no ad code is loaded at all, so it sets no cookies and makes no ad request, and the whole site still works. You can change your choice any time with Cookie settings.

Not quite, and I would rather say so plainly than imply otherwise. There are three things the site cannot run without, and they stay whichever button you choose:

• One cookie (session) that keeps you logged in, or that holds a random id for your guest session if you are studying without an account.
• Your cookie choice itself (studecks-consent), kept in your browser so the banner does not ask on every visit.
• Any deck you are part-way through writing (studecks-draft), kept in your browser so you do not lose it if you close the tab.

Choosing Strictly necessary keeps the site to exactly those and adds no advertising cookies. None of them profile you or follow you to other sites. The privacy policy sets out how long each one lasts.

Contact me using the address in the privacy policy, and I'll delete your account and everything in it.