Frequently Asked Questions

For your security, passwords on Qstream are stored in an encrypted form and cannot be retrieved. If you have forgotten your password, you can have it automatically reset and a new one sent to your email address using the Reset Password page.

If you want to temporarily suspend questions for a course, you can use the vacation hold feature mentioned in the previous question. If you are sure you want to permanently drop a course, simply click on the course name on your dashboard, then select the “Course Options” tab. Click on the “Drop this course” button. You will be asked to confirm that you really want to drop the course. If you proceed, you are removed from the course and all progress information on that course is deleted.

You can temporarily suspend one or all of your courses using the Vacation Hold function.

A vacation hold freezes your entire course in time. You will not be sent any new questions or any review questions. You will not lose any progress in your course. The spacing intervals of already-answered questions will be prolonged by the duration of the vacation hold. To set a vacation hold, click on a course in the “Courses you are taking” section of your dashboard, and then go to the “Course Options” tab. Enter the start date and duration of your vacation.

If you are not enjoying one or more of your courses, you can simply drop those courses as described in a previous question. If you want to completely remove your Qstream account, please submit a support request informing us and include either your username or the email address registered for your account. Your account will be permanently removed.

Spaced education is a new method of online education delivered by SpacedEd that has been shown in randomized trials to improve learning and boost knowledge retention. Spaced education combines two core psychology research findings: the spacing effect and the testing effect. Learners ranging from students to professionals find spaced education to be quick, effective, enjoyable, and addictive. SpacedEd courses are constructed as a series of questions and answers which are delivered to you on a regular schedule. As you answer the questions and learn from the answers, the spacing and content of future questions are adapted to your knowledge level. Over time, the course material is reinforced until you master and remember it.

The “spacing effect” refers to the psychology research finding that information which is presented and repeated over spaced intervals is learned and retained more effectively, in comparison to traditional bolus (“binge-and-purge”) methods of education. SpacedEd harnesses the spacing effect by presenting and reinforcing course content over spaced intervals of time.

The “testing effect” refers to the research finding that the long-term retention of information is significantly improved by testing learners on this information. SpacedEd harnesses the testing effect by utilizing a question-answer format for all course content. Asking thought-provoking questions worked for Socrates, and it is extremely effective within SpacedEd.

Definitely Yes! Multiple randomized trials conducted at Harvard Medical School have proven the efficacy of this approach. In the coming months we will make the published research findings available on the Research section of the SpacedEd web site.

Adaptive spacing refers to SpacedEd courses in which the questions are presented and reinforced in a pattern which is customized to the knowledge level of the learner. The spacing and reinforcement of the material adapts based on whether you answer a question correctly or not. Here is an example:

• You enroll in a 40-question course on how to grow the perfect tomato.
• You receive and answer 2 SpacedEd questions each day
• If you answer a question incorrectly, it is repeated in 8 days.
• If you answer a question correctly, it is repeated in 20 days.
• If you answer a question correctly twice-in-a-row, it is retired and is no longer repeated.
• You complete the course once all 40 questions are retired.

Yes! Learners ranging from students to physicians to sales reps see the repetition of questions to be a valuable opportunity to solidify their knowledge and to demonstrate that they have learned the material. They do not view the reinforcement of course content as a burden.

Please click on the “Do not repeat this question” button on the answer page for a question. That question will be retired and you will not see it again.

A question is “retired” if it will no longer be repeated in the course. In a “fixed spacing” course, this occurs after the final scheduled repetition of a question. In an “adaptive spacing” course, this occurs when you meet the retirement criterion in the course settings (e.g. answering a question correctly twice-in-a-row).

This depends on the settings you select for a course. While the courses usually take only a few minutes each day, they can take several weeks or more to complete. For fixed-spacing courses, the completion dates can be calculated with certainty. For adaptive-spacing courses, the duration required to complete a course depends on how well you are doing in a course.

For your security, passwords on Qstream are stored in an encrypted form and cannot be retrieved. If you have forgotten your password, you can have it automatically reset and a new one sent to your email address using the Reset Password page.

The green bars represent your progress in a course. The top bar represents the percentage of course questions that you have answered at least once. The bottom bar represents the percentage of questions that you have retired.

Gaps may appear in the delivery of questions once you have answered all of the questions at least once. This is expected. You can see when future questions will be delivered by clicking on the name of any course you are taking on your Dashboard and then selecting the Course Schedule tab.

Learning small amounts of material over multiple sessions (“distributed practice”) can significantly improve knowledge retention compared to “bolus” learning of large amounts at a single time point. (Unfortunately, the bolus “binge-and-purge” approach is extremely common in education.)

The randomized trials suggest that a nice balance is 2-3 questions per day. This number allows you to cover all the course material in a reasonable amount of time, but still allows you to complete your course material in just a few minutes each day. While the course author will assign some suggested defaults settings for the course, the ultimate decision is up to you.

The spacing intervals should be selected based on when you want to optimize retention of your learning. In the Harvard research trials, the spacing intervals have varied from 5 days to 6 weeks. Ideally, the spacing interval should be about 4-10% of the retention interval. In other words, if you want to optimize your retention of learning one year (50 weeks) later, the spacing interval should be between 2-5 weeks long.

We suggest receiving 2-3 questions every 1-2 days. These settings make it easy to stay up-to-date in your course while covering all the course material in a reasonable amount of time. The Harvard studies have used frequencies ranging from once-a-day to once-a-week. While the course author will assign some suggested defaults settings for the course, the ultimate decision is up to you.

Most of the Harvard studies have used the following criteria: a question is retired if it is answered correctly twice-in-a-row. We recommend using this criterion, although we acknowledge that this is not a perfect criterion for “mastery” of the content. It requires that learners demonstrate their consistent learning and retention of the material covered in a question, while allowing learners to retire all of the questions in a reasonable amount of time.

There are several things that you can do:

• Answer the backlog of questions — either all at once or a few each day.
• Put the course on vacation hold until you have more time to answer the questions.
• Re-start the course with new course settings: fewer questions delivered less frequently. If you do this, you will unfortunately lose your progress in the course.

You can turn off notifications so you are not reminded of questions on Saturday or Sunday. To do this, when you are logged in select “Edit Account” from the user menu. (The user menu appears when you point the mouse to where your name is shown in the top right corner of the window.) On the Edit Account screen find the section labelled “Email Notification”. Check the first checkbox labelled “Don’t send me questions on weekends” and click the “Save Changes” button. You will now no longer be notified of questions on the weekends.

For your security, passwords on Qstream are stored in an encrypted form and cannot be retrieved. If you have forgotten your password, you can have it automatically reset and a new one sent to your email address using the Reset Password page.

If you want to temporarily suspend questions for a course, you can use the vacation hold feature mentioned in the previous question. If you are sure you want to permanently drop a course, simply click on the course name on your dashboard, then select the “Course Options” tab. Click on the “Drop this course” button. You will be asked to confirm that you really want to drop the course. If you proceed, you are removed from the course and all progress information on that course is deleted.

You can temporarily suspend one or all of your courses using the Vacation Hold function.

A vacation hold freezes your entire course in time. You will not be sent any new questions or any review questions. You will not lose any progress in your course. The spacing intervals of already-answered questions will be prolonged by the duration of the vacation hold. To set a vacation hold, click on a course in the “Courses you are taking” section of your dashboard, and then go to the “Course Options” tab. Enter the start date and duration of your vacation.

If you are not enjoying one or more of your courses, you can simply drop those courses as described in a previous question. If you want to completely remove your Qstream account, please submit a support request informing us and include either your username or the email address registered for your account. Your account will be permanently removed.

The spacing intervals should be selected based on when you want to optimize retention of your learning. In the Harvard research trials, the spacing intervals have varied from 5 days to 6 weeks. Ideally, the spacing interval should be about 4-10% of the retention interval. In other words, if you want to optimize your retention of learning one year (50 weeks) later, the spacing interval should be between 2-5 weeks long.

Most of the Harvard studies have used the following criteria: a question is retired if it is answered correctly twice-in-a-row. We recommend using this criterion, although we acknowledge that this is not a perfect criterion for “mastery” of the content. It requires that learners demonstrate their consistent learning and retention of the material covered in a question, while allowing learners to retire all of the questions in a reasonable amount of time.

There is no limit to topics on which excellent Qstream courses can be created. The spaced education methodology is content-neutral and thus can be utilized to learn most anything. Potential applications range from teaching geography to school children to documenting competence in accounting skills among small business owners. While it might be a challenge to teach creative writing using the question-answer format, a whole range of topics work extremely well in this format: test preparation, language learning with embedded audio files, gardening skills with embedded YouTube videos, etc. The full multimedia capabilities of the Internet can be harnessed to create a rich and effective learning experience.

Due to the limitations of the initial Harvard spaced education delivery system, the randomized trials conducted to date have only utilized the multiple-choice question (MCQ) format with one correct answer. Course authors should use the question format which best meets their needs. Each question format has its strengths and weaknesses:

• Multiple choice questions (MCQ) – Well-constructed MCQ questions with one correct answer are effective assessment tools and, due to their strong psychometric properties, have become gold-standard in educational assessment. Good MCQ questions can be very challenging to construct. Some testing organizations like the American Board of Urology spend thousands of dollars constructing each of the MCQs used on their board examinations.
• Multiple correct answer (MCA) questions – MCA questions are often less effective than MCQs as evaluation tools, but they can be more effective as educational tools. MCA questions are generally easier to write than MCQs. Another name for this type of question is ‘multiple true-false’ because the learner is forced to determine if each possible answer choice for a MCA question is correct or not. If you find yourself writing MCQs with “select all of the following, except” in the question stem or with “all of the above” as a answer choice, you might find the MCA format to be more effective.
• Fill-in-the-blank (FIB) questions – The FIB question format demands that learners perform “free recall” of the answers, unlike the cued recall needed to answer the MCQ and MCA formats. Psychology research indicates the FIB format is more effective than MCQs in generating long-term retention of learning. FIB questions are relatively quick-and-easy to write, and they can be quite challenging for the learner to answer correctly. When writing an FIB question, the course author can choose the correct answer and several alternative correct answers. One weakness of this question format is that the learner must type in one of these answers exactly in order to correctly answer the FIB question.

No FIB answers are not case sensitive so learners do not have to match the capitalization of your answer exactly in order to get the question right. For example, if the correct answer you have specified is “Paris” both “paris” and “Paris” will be marked as correct if entered by the learner.

• Highlight a word which will act as the link
• Click the chain icon in the course editor
• Insert the target web address (http:// is needed before the address)
• We recommend that you select the option to have the link opened in a new window
• The “title” is what will appear when users roll-over the link
• Hit ‘save’ at the bottom of the question page
• To see how the link works, use the preview function.

Insert a picture into the course description page. Qstream uses the first picture which appears on this page as the course icon. If no picture is inserted here, Qstream uses the course author’s picture as the course icon. The icon will appear as a square, so it is best to choose a picture that will look good when compressed into this shape.

Qstream uses the first picture which appears on the course description page as the course icon. To change the course icon, insert a new picture on the course description page. You can delete any prior pictures if you wish.

Tags are one-word descriptors that you can assign to your courses, photos, and profile. Tags are a keywords you choose to help organize your stuff on this site. You can assign as many tags as you like and rename or delete them later.

You can add images or flash media to your profile and your courses by using the image ​ and media buttons on the rich text editor.