0002: Four reviews, one per kind of study document
Decision: the evidence is split into four multivocal reviews: practice questions, flashcards, exercise sets and instructional text, each owning the works no other review in the family holds.
Status: accepted, 2026-10-29. Shape: decision record.
Context
- A study document is built from four kinds of part: the questions a learner answers, the prompts reviewed later on a schedule, the exercises worked in order, and the explanatory text around them.
- Each kind has its own literature: item writing for questions, card formulation for flashcards, sequencing and fading for exercises, pedagogical aids and alignment for texts.
- Nine reviews of the family hold works these four would otherwise meet again, from learning science to progressive disclosure.
Decision
| Review | Owns |
|---|---|
| practice-questions | the kind, level and format of a question, item writing and flawed items, feedback, where answers sit, generated questions |
| flashcards | card formulation and granularity, interference, who makes the cards, how learners use and drop them, text with embedded prompts |
| exercise-sets | blocked or interleaved sheets, the passage from worked example to problem, difficulty and variability, hints, keys and solutions |
| instructional-text | objectives and their alignment with the checks, key terms, summaries, boxes, refutation text, guided notes and study guides, textbook aids |
- A work already reviewed elsewhere in the family is linked there, with one line of context, and not reviewed again. The boundaries and the list of what each sibling holds are in the brief every review agent read.
- The method is the one the topic reviews share, with one addition: education research is indexed first in ERIC, so every formal string is also counted there.
Options it rules out
None was weighed in a table when this record was written; these are the options its context argues against.
| Option | Why it lost |
|---|---|
| one review of every kind of study document | each kind has its own literature, from item writing to card formulation, fading and pedagogical aids |
| one review per technique: retrieval, spacing, worked examples | the techniques are reviewed in reader-ergonomics, and decision 0001 takes the document |
| reviewing again what a sibling holds | nine reviews of the family hold those works; each is linked once, with a line of context |
Consequences
- Four agents work at once, so a key chosen by one is checked against the other three before the merge.
- 420 sources in the four, with no work reviewed twice in the family; the pool of each is in evidence.
- A study guide uses all four: its shape will draw on every review, and each block will cite the one it rests on.
- The cost: a reader of one review follows links to the others and to the siblings for what is held there.