product · explain-back

Teach it back. In your own words. Get scored.

The gap between recognizing a concept and being able to teach it is where most learning quietly fails. Explain-back is the surface that catches it — in 30 seconds and a paragraph.

recognition memory ≠ production memory

explain-back · biology · signal transductionhaiku grader

what you wrote

“The cell has a receptor on the outside that gets hit by a signal. That triggers something inside — I think cAMP or maybe MAP kinase — and then a bunch of proteins get activated and something happens in the nucleus.”

score

3/5

one-sentence feedback

Right shape, wrong causality: cAMP and MAP kinase are alternative second messengers, not alternatives. Trace one pathway end-to-end and try again.

→ added to your recall queue · returns tomorrow

the rubric

Six grades. One paragraph. Zero ambiguity.

Haiku grades against a rubric we tuned against hundreds of hand-scored explanations. The rubric is public because a scoring system you can't see is a scoring system you can't trust.

off-topic

You wrote about a different concept.

keywords only

You named the right words in the wrong order.

wrong causality

Right pieces, wrong arrows between them.

correct gist, meaningful gap

You'd almost teach it. Almost.

correct with minor imprecision

A peer would learn from this.

precise and self-consistent

A peer would understand it after one read.

Why it works

Recognition memory is cheap. Production memory is expensive. You can recognize the mitochondria diagram, nod at the phrase “powerhouse of the cell,” and still be unable to explain, under exam pressure, why cells with high energy demand have more mitochondria per cell.

Explain-back is the fastest way to distinguish these two kinds of memory. It costs a paragraph and 30 seconds. The score is a diagnosis of a gap you didn’t know you had.

How to use it well

Don’t pick your most-confident concept — pick your second-most-confident. That’s where the interesting gap lives. Aim for a 4, not a 5; aiming for 5 makes you defensive, aiming for 4 makes you honest.

And come back a week later — explain the same concept back again, watch the score climb. That climb is the shape of your understanding compounding.

Explain-back caught the gap Anki couldn't. I recognized the mechanism but couldn't teach it.

— beta user · M2, US MD program

start now

Teach it back. In your own words. Get scored.

Six grades. One paragraph. Zero ambiguity.

Why it works

How to use it well

Take back the semester you actually meant to have.