Assume I have a deck of notes with two fields, front and back. Each time I study, I’d like each card to present the front of a note together with 4 choices: one from the back of the note under study, and 3 additional choices from the backs of random notes in the same deck, with all choices presented in a random order.
This experience is quite common in other flash card apps, such as Quizlet, Memrise, and Tinycards.
Ideally the card would use Javascript to make it possible to click the correct answer, though that’s not necessary. Being able to randomize incorrect choices from the entire deck seems to be the missing feature from the solutions I’ve reviewed in the Anki ecosystem.
I’ve looked at various Anki add-ons and deck templates, including (I’m only allowed to post 2 links, sorry):
Multiple Choice for Anki (add-on 1566095810)
Multiple Choice [UPDATED AS OF 2.1.14] (add-on 413154037)
The Memrise Template is very close to what I need, but the choices are specified in the note itself and only randomized at midnight, rather than being dynamically generated from the entire deck and randomized for each study.
I’m curious if there are any existing solutions for this workflow in the Anki ecosystem that I’ve missed. Any pointers would be much appreciated!
However, I would strongly advise against using multiple choice questions, as they give too much hint. You will only learn to shine on multiple choice tests with that exact knowledge, but you cannot apply it to the real world. Rather convert the answer of the multiple choice to the real answer if you actually want to learn anything meaningful.
Oops, I did only read multiple choice and not this mixing from the entire deck. I would think this is an even worse idea though, to be honest. It would be possible with an add-on, but for that you would have to know some Python. It’s not worth it, learning results will be bad. In this case, it is even easier to distinguish the real answer from the other ones, or to introduce needless memory interference.
As a side note, back when I didn’t knew about flashcard apps or Anki, I wrote myself a multiple choice question vocabulary trainer for my calculator drawing the answers from the entire vocab pool. I do not know why I did not think about a plain flashcard style and letting the user decide whether it was right or wrong. Regardless, learning-wise it is not very effective. Multiple choice is only little better than passive recall, you want to make it active.