Card types5 / 9
In this guide
Card types
Multiple Choice
Pick-the-answer cards.
What & why
A Multiple Choice card asks a question and offers a handful of options; the learner picks one. You write 2 to 5 options and mark one correct. In the app the learner taps an option, presses Check, and sees whether they got it right — with an optional explanation you can add for the answer. The options appear in a random order each time, so their position never becomes the cue.
It’s the format of most exams, so it’s a natural fit for test prep — and the options force a real choice instead of a vague “I sort of knew that”.
The catch: a multiple-choice card is only as good as its wrong answers. Plausible distractors make the learner discriminate; silly ones let them guess. That’s what makes this type more work to write well than a Basic card.
When it beats Basic
Reach for it when the learner needs to tell similar options apart — confusable terms, exam-style questions, choices that look right until you know the detail. For plain recall, free-recall on a Basic card teaches more, because retrieving from nothing is stronger than recognising from a list.
A good fit: Which organelle produces most of the cell’s ATP? — with options Nucleus · Mitochondria · Ribosome · Chloroplast. The near-misses are the point: they’re all organelles, so the learner has to actually know.