I am teaching an online course and want to use Anki to help students learn vocabulary. I I thought I would make a deck with all the words from the textbook and tag them by chapter (the “textbook” deck). There would be a separate deck for the current class (the “class” deck). As we begin each chapter, I could move in all the cards from the “textbook” deck that are tagged with that chapter. Cards specific to the particular students could be added to the"class" deck. When I teach the course again I could repeat the process, creating a custom deck for each class.
I am having trouble moving the cards out of the “textbook” deck into the “class” deck. I try to use “select all” but only one card gets moved over. I tried exporting to a text file, but I get a notice that the cards already exist in my collection.
How can I copy a group of cards, all with a specific tag, into a different deck? I feel like I must be missing some simple thing.
Not what you asked, but – I would suggest that you don’t need to do quite so much moving around of cards between decks. The tags should be enough to manage distributing the cards to your students. See Adding/Editing - Anki Manual .
Thanks for the reply. I will distribute the cards, but the main use of the deck will be in class. I have the time, there are only two students, and I want to ensure they learn the words. But I want to reuse my “textbook” deck for further iterations of this course, and I want the “class” deck to include only words from the chapters covered so far, plus words relevant to this particular pair of students.
After you use Select All, all the cards should be highlighted. Click on any card with the right mouse button to get the pop-up menu, then select Change Deck. In the Change Deck dialog, click on the new deck and then click on Move Cards.
I think the solution there might be keeping the “master” deck in a separate profile that is just for you. Then you can import it into a new profile for each iteration of the course. That will allow you to move the cards as needed – from textbook to class – and customize the deck. At the end of the term, you’ll be done using that deck, and you can start fresh next term.
I’m not sure I understand though how you’re using the deck “in class” with multiple students. A spaced-repetition system like Anki might not be the best fit for that, since review history and scheduling are meaningless when they aren’t linked to an individual.
I have several decks that I use for this sort of thing.
I have my master deck for the course saved off line or available in another profile. I only add it to my Anki app just before the term begins. Near the end of each week, I search for cards tagged for that week and move them into the current course deck.
If I update any notes, I tag them as updated, and add them into the master deck.