Axel Kohler(1), Valentin Dieckmann(2), Nino Koskowski(2), Peter Poloczek(2), Klaus von Wangenheim(2)
(1)Department of Neurophysiology, Max Planck Institute for Brain Research, Frankfurt am Main, Germany. (2)Ernst-Reuter-Schule 1, Frankfurt am Main, Germany.

Repetitio mater est studiorum - Repetition is the mother of learning. This dictum is as valid now as it was 1500 years ago. Our brains have not changed much since then: We still forget most of the things we learn and therefore spend major parts of our lifetime rereading articles we had read before and relearning facts we had known before. Hermann Ebbinghaus, the 19th century psychologist and pioneer of learning psychology, was the first one to describe systematically the time course of forgetting. Although there is an ongoing debate about how exactly the forgetting curve should be described mathematically, it is clear that the gradient is steep in the beginning and levels off at later times, so that at least a small fraction of the learned material is retained in the long run, although most of it is lost after a short while. The only way to counteract the decay of our memories is to repeat what we would like to remember. Different techniques can be used for this purpose - from flash cards to scheduled repetition of material. The problem is to organize the learning process over longer times because every study item has its own learning history and ideally we would have to keep track of our learning sessions and consolidate items only when it is necessary.

For this purpose, we have developed a computer program - BrainTrainer - that allows users to store items they wish to learn (including picture material) and also helps to optimize the consolidation process. BrainTrainer keeps track of the learning history of every single item and applies the power law of learning, so that items are only repeated when they need to be relearned, with increasing repetition intervals over time. In addition, the material can be organized in a categorical structure and specific items can be retrieved with a search function. The program is Web-based (PHP programming language and MySQL database server) and can therefore easily be used in schools to organize the learning process for students. It is designed to promote "mature" learning since students have to compare their answer to the correct answer themselves. BrainTrainer has the potential to substantially reduce the time spent to consolidate learning material and provides students and teachers with the opportunity to spent more time on the creative and interactive parts of learning.