Out of curiosity: How does the individual student select the cards they want to study? Using existing tags or their own custom tags I suppose? If they create custom tags, how do they keep their local version of the deck in sync with upstream?
All cards start suspended by default, and you unsuspend cards usually by tag. For example, lets say you watched a a popular third-party exam prep video from Boards & Beyond on Insulin. You would find the corresponding video has its own tag "tag:#AK\_Step1\_v12::#B&B::08\_Endocrinology::03\_Pancreas::03\_Insulin" which you would unsuspend all the cards for. That's the basic flow, but everyone does things a little differently.
Some people don't watch videos just do review questions from UWorld which are also tagged. Some people manage cards using a mix of tags and decks. Some people search and manually unsuspend cards individually. Some schools cross-tag cards with their lecture. Personally, I use an AI search to unsuspend cards by cross-referencing against a PDF of lecture for the day.
Custom tags can be protected when syncing from upstream: https://community.ankihub.net/t/protecting-fields-and-tags/1...