As the end of the fall semester approaches, there is a slew of Web sites to help students prepare for their upcoming exams.

Quizlet.com is a free tool for making electronic flashcards. Its founder bills it as a tool to "make learning fun, thus make learning effective" according to the site's "about" page.

Once a user signs up, he or she creates a "deck" by typing terms and definitions. After a deck has been made, there are three steps to memorizing the words: "Familiarize," "Learn" and "Test."

In the "familiarize" step, the user is simply shown the terms and definitions. During "learn", the user is shown the term and must type the definition. There is a button that says "Give Up." Upon clicking, the user is shown the answer and must retype the answer before moving on to the next card.

Quizlet keeps track of the terms a user gets right and wrong.

Once a user gets a term right during the "Learn" phase, he or she won't be asked to answer it again. For the "Test" step, a test is generated from a random sample of terms.

The test is comprised of multiple choice, true or false, write-in and matching questions.

Waqas Khatri (graduate) said he thinks Quizlet would help him for his classes.

"That would be quite useful," he said. "I'm still taking biology classes."

Ajab Amin (senior-biobehavioral health) said she has reservations about using online flashcards "since most tests are taken on paper," she said.

Lexdex.com takes a somewhat different approach to online flash cards. Instead of the user entering the terms and definitions, Lexdex has a database of vocabulary from about 500 textbooks, according to its Web site.

Lexdex's database is mostly comprised of economics and language-learning textbooks. Access to the online flashcards is free. However, the site plans to charge for access at the start of the new year, Lexdex campus representative Alyssa Rosenblum (junior-marketing) said.

Rosenblum said Lexdex's main advantage over traditional flashcards is the time saved from making the cards, as well as the ability to take cards anywhere, even on a cell phone.

"It takes hours to make flash cards. I know this. I take Chinese. I used to make flash cards for every word we would learn," she said. "I have a BlackBerry ... and they support a good amount of cell phones."

To Rosenblum, Lexdex is a way to spend less time writing flash cards, and more time reading them.

"It was such a more efficient way to study," she said.

While Lexdex and Quizlet narrow their focus on flash cards, Studyblue.com tries to be a one-stop shop for collaboration between classmates. The Web site is structured as a social network of sorts, built around the courses people take. Upon registration, a user adds the courses he or she takes. After this step, students who take the same course and/or section can share notes, calendars and flashcards. Students who upload notes are eligible to earn money for their notes. The Web site also has a directory for tutors to offer their services.

Joey Bailey (junior-mechanical engineering) said Studyblue could be a better way to collaborate online between classmates.

"I've used Facebook [groups] for some of my classes," he said.