All of our courses are geared for the “math reluctant” student. 🙂

Except, let me note that math is about relationships, which is why you’ll see an “equals sign” in every equation. We have found that these relationships can be described just as well, if not better, in English rather than through mathematical notations. This is what you get with a “conceptual” approach, which focuses on the concepts—the main ideas—which are described by examples everyone can relate to.

For example, when a rock is dropped, it accelerates downward. That means it’s picking up speed as it falls. It starts out slow. By the time it hits the ground, it’s moving much faster. The farther it has to fall the more speed it will pick up. Right?

Well, drop a heavy lead ball and a lighter wooden ball of the same size from the same height. You’ll see that they accelerate downward side by side. The lead ball has more weight, which is a greater pull of gravity. So shouldn’t it accelerate faster? The answer is YES! But that lead ball also has more inertia, which means it’s harder to get moving. So because it has more inertia, shouldn’t it accelerate slower? The answer is YES!  What you end up with is a scenario whereby the lead’s greater weight (it wants to accelerate fast) is counter-balanced by its greater inertia (it wants to accelerate slower). In fact, necessarily, the greater its weight, the greater its inertia. It’s a wash. That’s why light objects (with little inertia) and heavy objects (with a lot of inertia) always accelerate downward at the same rate, which on Earth is about 10 meters per second per second.

OK, here’s the math: acceleration  =  weight/mass  = WEIGHT/MASS

Note as weight gets bigger, so does the mass (inertia). The ratio of the two is always the same. That’s why all things (neglecting wind resistance) fall at the same rate.

We’re of a “physics first” philosophy. Physics is the foundation. Chemistry is the physics of the atom. Biology is the chemistry of life. This is why we would point your high school student first to our Conceptual Physics course, which would be followed by Conceptual Chemistry, followed by Conceptual Biology.

The most important thing is that the program matches the interest of the student. Some students, for example, may be really drawn to the astronomy. For such a student, our Conceptual Astronomy course would be a good place to start, though you might also look to the PAC course (physics, astronomy, chemistry). You can think of our course listing like an ice cream store. Let the student pick the flavor. If they are unsure, you may have suggestions yourself. Consider that you too will have the opportunity to learn with your student, which is half the fun. 🙂

 

LearnScience.Academy is a support site designed to walk the homeschooling teacher or student through the rich resources available at ConceptualAcademy.com.

ConceptualAcademy.com is a comprehensive learning and content management system that houses all the tools you will use as a student enrolled in one of our self-study courses. Conceptual Academy is also used by colleges and universities for their online classes and on-campus classes that feature a student-centered approach.

We offer two types of courses: Full Version and Customized Version. The full version covers the entire table of contents of the textbook from front to back. A customized version follows a syllabus that skips around the table of contents in a particular sequence designed to match specific needs. For example, “Conceptual Astronomy” is a customized version of our Conceptual Physical Science textbook in that it focuses only on chapters germane to astronomy.

 

Yes! We are well-equipped to serve a home school cooperative through our “instructor-led” courses. In such a course, the coop teacher contacts us and requests an instructor account. With this request, the teacher should also specify which self-study course they would like to use as a template. We then transform the requested self-study course into a dedicated “instructor-led” course. The teacher then has control over all the parameters of the course including class dates, content, points per quiz question, the grade book, and FYI pages. Within each FYI page, it’s the teacher’s profile image that appears rather than one of us authors. Through this instructor’s account, the coop teacher can also edit the content of each FYI page as desired. This includes uploading documents and embedding external videos. At the end of the course, the teacher can click the “clone” button and a new course will be automatically built for next year’s students.

Please note: We generally only set up an instructors account at Conceptual Academy for homeschool teachers with four or more students working together in the same course. There is no limit on the maximum number of students. At one university, they routinely enroll 600 students per semester. Of course, managing 600 students is another matter! With three or less students, it actually makes more sense for each student to sign up for their own self-study program.

 

After making contact with a qualified instructor, we set up an account for that instructor. This may be any instructor at a homeschool cooperative, high school, college, or university. Through this account all of our online resources are collated to the instructor’s course syllabus. Alternatively, the instructor can chose a syllabus from one of our templates, which are, in fact, the self-study courses. With a course ID, the instructor’s students enroll in this customized course where they navigate through our resources by the calendar dates of the semester as determined by the instructor. Reading quizzes give students credit for having read the textbook. Video quizzes provide credit for having watched our video tutorials. We offer other resources, such as worksheets and guidance on the content of each class (also found in the self-study courses). The instructor’s main focus can then be on helping the students to learn that content, which happens through classroom activities, follow-up lectures (typically at the college or university level), office visits, homework assignments, laboratories, exams, and more.

 

Our self-study courses have been created by the author’s and are based on the courses they have taught at many different college campuses, including CA State, University of Hawaii, Leeward Community College, Saint Michael’s College, … As experienced professors, they have anticipated questions and concerns about the subject mater, and are able to address these questions through their personalized “FYI” pages found for each class within the course.

 

Also included are numerous worksheets, chapter summaries, and, most importantly, the unit exams with directions on how to take these exams using the collaborative “pyramid” format. Ideally, the student taking a self-study course has a mentor to help guide and inspire them throughout the course. There are also numerous hands-on activities within the textbook that can serve as the lab experience. To further enrich the student’s experience, we also recommend purchasing one of our lab manuals (also sold separately) or a lab kit (through eScience Labs starting August 2016).

No. However, we have been teaching these courses for many years, which means we are able to anticipate questions and concerns your student will have. We address these questions and concerns by guiding the students in our carefully designed FYI pages. Through Conceptual Academy, we authors work to enthuse the student as much as we can in a virtual format as well as support the parents by taking care of the mechanics of the course: the syllabus, quizzes, worksheets, chapter summaries, exams, planners, and so forth. This will allow the student’s mentor to focus on the most important and rewarding aspects of teaching, which is being there to coach your student along—in real time. 

While on this subject, you should know that our AI tutor “Learn with Alia” is much more than your standard chatbot or LLM. Though there’s no substitute for a quality live human tutor, in the absence of such, Alia has much to offer as well. Remember that she’s conversational and can adjust to each student’s needs. For example, if you find her explanations too short, just ask her to make them longer! If you’d like her to generate practice questions, just ask. We’ve trained her to meet the needs of the typical student. But within a session, each student can further that training to their individual needs right then and there.

The PDF pages of the textbook are included with our chemistry and biology programs, as well as Conceptual Integrated Science Explorations (CPSE). For all our other programs, you’ll need to purchase the textbook separately through places such as Amazon or AbesBooks.

 

Each course comes with a set of automated reading check and video check quizzes and Homework Practice Sessions (HPS). Primarily, these quizzes help students to be sure that they’re getting the main points from either their reading or video assignments. Secondarily, it allows the student’s mentor to track the student’s progress. Scores on these quizzes at tracked within the student’s grade book. The mentor opens the student’s account and navigates to this grade book, which shows scores for the entire class, as well as within each unit. Through this grade book, however, you cannot mine down to the level of individual quizzes. To do that, go to the quiz itself by navigating through the course syllabus. Each quiz can only be taken once. But once taken, you’re brought straight to the results page.

In terms of problems at the back of each chapter, worksheets, and unit exams, this is where the mentor will spend time making sure the student is making genuine progress. You’ll want to check the student’s answers to the chapter problems against the answers in the back of the book (odd-numbered) or with Alia. You’ll do the same for the worksheets. For the unit exams, you’ll be right there with the student taking the unit exam with him or her (assuming you use the suggested “pyramid” format as described within the instructions given with each unit exam.)

There is no expiration date to any enrollment. Start when you need and take as long as you need. We update our courses regularly with most major updates taking place in the summer months so that the courses are shining their best at the start of a new academic year. Note: Though there is no expiration date to enrollment, that enrollment is restricted to that one student. If two students were to share the same course, then they’d also be sharing the same grade book and taking the same quizzes But each quiz can only be taken once. It becomes a mess. Thus, one enrollment = one student.

 

Yes. If students share the same account they will also be sharing the same grade book, which doesn’t work because each quiz can only be taken once. Thus, each student needs his or her own account, which means a separate username, email address, and password.

 

You are likely using the wrong username. Please note, your username may NOT be your email address. If you click the “Request New Password” link, then you’ll get a new password, but it won’t work because the password is not the problem. You’re likely using the wrong username, and that may be the problem. You need to use the username you chose, and this might NOT be your email address. Also please note that both the username and password are case and space sensitive.

 

You’re looking at the public side of the website. You need to be logged into your account upon which you’ll see a big blue “My Profile” button in top right of your browser. Just to the left of the My Profile button you’ll see the “My Courses” link. Click that link and it will bring you to the list of your courses. Click “enter” to enter a course. You’ll be brought to the FYI page of your first class where you’ll see your instructor’s profile image, advice about the content, and documents to download (scroll downward). To the left of the FYI page you’ll see the list of chapter sections you are to study for this class. Click a chapter section and the video tutorials for that chapter section will appear. Please note: There may be several videos for one chapter section—you need to watch ALL these videos to complete the tutorial for that one chapter section. The chapter reading quiz will be at the bottom of the list of chapter sections (your reading assignment) and you’ll find a video quiz button under each video (most videos, actually, not all).

Also, for some chapter sections there are no videos and you’ll see a graphic with a “For Your Consideration” question, which, though not for credit, your student should seriously try to answer.

 

Short answer: Scroll downward. Long Answer: Any website is intuitive after you know where to look. Thank you for your patience as you become familiar with our layout. You’ll note our aim has been to keep each page as clean as possible and free of any advertisements. That said, we have much to offer, which makes placing our resources on each page a challenge. With user feedback, we expect navigation to improve over time. For now, when in doubt, scroll downward!

 

We each have our different interests and different talents. Thus, there can be no “one size fits all” especially when it comes to learning. Built in flexibility is key. Also, when it comes to pacing a student, we understand the most important thing is finding that balance between not too much and not too little. As we like to say it: a well-placed challenge. Finding that balance is key. From the start you’ll have a good guess of where that balance is for each particular student. But students grow before our very eyes. You can expect to need to make adjustments along the journey. . . it wouldn’t be a journey otherwise, would it?

OK. Enough waxing poetic. How are your courses structured?? What’s the basic template we have to work with?

Let’s consider the full version of Conceptual Chemistry. You’ll see this curriculum is broken down into six units. Within each unit there are five to seven lessons. Within each lesson there are several chapter sections to be studied.

There are typically 180 days in a school year, which is about 30 school days per unit. With the understanding that there are about 20 school days in a month, each unit should last about 1.5 months, or 6 weeks. Thus, we have about 6 lessons in a unit, which means each “lesson” should take about a week.

Now, each lesson contains 3 or 4 chapter sections. This is a long-winded way of saying: if a student is going over one chapter section per school day, then they are on track for completing this entire course over a single school year. Please note, this is for one of our full version courses, which is relatively ambitious and a good venture for a student who is revved up by science.

That said, some material is more difficult than others. So a “lesson a week” should be taken with a grain of salt. The first six or so chapters of any of our courses dig into the main ideas. They lay the foundation. This is hard but rewarding work. In practice, some of those lessons could easily span two weeks. How fast you go will be your call as well as your student’s, remembering that the main goal is to nurture a joy of learning about this amazing universe. Chapters toward the end of a course tend to be more “topical” in nature where the student applies that which they learned from earlier chapters. Which is to say, you can expect to spend longer on earlier chapters than later chapters.

In summary, expect a slower pace at the start and a quicker pace toward the end. But on average, 1 lesson per week.

Keep in mind that a full version course is only ambitious if you’re aiming to cover the entire book. You can sign up for a full version course and skip around as you see fit. You can also consider one of our “customized” courses. For example, within chemistry we have: Contextual Chemistry, Prep Chemistry, and Life Science Chemistry. . . . all using the same textbook, but presenting selected concepts and topics of chemistry in a different sequence.. . we lay out the “jumping around” for you.

You’re preparing right now by studying LearnScience.Academy. Once you know what Conceptual Academy is all about, you’re pretty much all set. Your role will be to make sure your student tends to their assignments as spelled out within the course. You need not be an expert in a science field. Actually, it works better if you’re not. How so? You can invite and challenge your student to “teach” you. As an expert learner, you know that the best way to learn is to teach. And that, furthermore, the best way to teach is to listen.

Many homeschooling parents are wanting to print out all of the documents held within a Conceptual Academy course. Toward this, however, you can relax. The documents of one of our self study courses are presented to the student exactly when they need to be presented. However, there is one particular type of document that you’ll certainly want to be mindful of. These are the unit exams that appear within the FYI page of the last class of each unit. Another important document is the “Certificate of Completion” that you’ll find in the FYI page of the very last class of the course. When you get there, please print out this document and sign it. It may sound silly, but this kind of recognition of achievement is crucially important after all the great effort that has been put forth by your student. It’s said that one of the greatest gifts that you can ever give is appreciation.

We don’t expect the student to be working on their science course every day. As with any curriculum, our courses work best when interleaved with other areas of study. However, when the student is in fact working on their science course, here’s what typically happens: The student starts by heading to class at Conceptual Academy where they watch the video lessons for that class and also answers the video check quizzes. The student then moves to the reading assignment within the textbook, which is followed by taking the reading check quiz for that class at Conceptual Academy. At this point, the student has been introduced to the material. This is the first step. What comes next is critically important: the student works on the odd-numbered questions at the back of the chapter, the student works on the worksheets, the student performs the hands-on activities or experiments from a lab kit, the student explains to others what they think they have learned. This is the second step. Together this first and second step for each class, spread out over a period of a couple days or even a week, is enough to keep the student immersed in the concepts of science so that the learning they experience is deep.

Hands-on lab activities are not only fun, they are essential to learning science. Thus, each of our textbooks features many intriguing hands-on science activities, which are easy to perform, and doable using household materials and equipment. It is highly recommended that the home school student works on as many of these activities as possible. For a complete laboratory experience, however, it is also recommended that the home school students work on additional activities, such as those found within the lab manuals that accompany each of our textbooks. Although a number of the labs within these manuals require a traditional laboratory, there are many that can be modified to work within a homeschool setting.

We also highly recommend you use a “field journal” approach where the focus is less on discovering some phenomenon and more on documenting one’s experience. You’ll find our field journal rubric here: Field Journal Rubric

There are also commercially available third party lab kits that should be considered, such as those found through Arbor Scientific (best for physics and astronomy) and Flinn Scientifc (best for all other fields). Importantly, we have recently formed an association with eScience Labs who, under our direction, is now offering lab kits to accompany our chemistry courses.

Yes, you need the textbook. You really do. Our video lessons will give you the context you need to read the textbook with greater understanding. Perhaps more importantly, however, the textbook also contains the questions at the back of each chapter. It’s essential that you work on these questions. Consider this: If you think you only need to watch our video lessons and read the textbook, then you’re in trouble. It’s one thing to absorb information. It’s quite another to be able to articulate that information yourself. If you understand something, if you really do, then you should be able to explain it to some one else. That should be your litmus test of whether you have learned or not. To get to that point, you open your mouth and start talking. Not easy! You also get there by working on the questions at the back of each chapter. Also not easy! Stop grumbling. When learning is easy, so is forgetting. We all need to exert effort in order to learn. No one is exempt. Please read the article on “How to Study Effectively”. This article will empower you to do well both in school and beyond.

The textbook industry is undergoing some significant changes. It’s a long story that you can read about in our article “Why Are Textbooks So Expensive“. The short version is that authors and publisher receive zero compensation for the sale of used and rented textbooks. It’s a lot of work writing a textbook. It’s not so much work binding 800 pieces of paper to a cover and moving it from point A to point B. In buying a used textbook you’re buying the movement of that paper into your hands. Zero dollars of your money goes to the people who crafted the very reason you’re wanting that paper in your hands. To compensate for zero income from the use of their intellectual property, the publisher keeps raising the price far beyond normal rates of inflation. It’s a non-sustainable cycle about to burst along with health care costs and increasing tuition. Sigh. But to the second question. Can you use an earlier edition with Conceptual Academy? Yes!! First, please note that by joining Conceptual Academy you are supporting the creators of your curriculum directly. Our gratitude runs deep as this allows us to continue doing what we love doing and have been trained to do, which is to create meaningful curriculum. That said, please go for the latest edition you can possibly afford. Toward that consider the eTextbooks, which you’ll find much more affordable.

To get more specific, regarding any of our chemistry courses, you’ll need the 4th or 5th edition of Conceptual Chemsitry. The third edition really won’t do as the sequence of topics has since been modified significantly. For Conceptual Physics, the latest 12th edition is the first edition to have section numbers. This is important as the video lessons here at Conceptual Academy are organized by section numbers. In a pinch, the 11th edition will work, but you’ll experience some confusion of what goes where. For Conceptual Physical Science, the 5th edition is particularly important for the changes that were made to the astronomy chapters. The more recent 6th edition has the same structure of the 5th edition with even further updates, again, especially in astronomy. As you may know these days there is a lot changing in our understanding of astronomy as more and more discoveries are being made using space probes and space telescopes.

Your next question might be: “Really, what significant improvements are made from one edition to the next?” Please understand that a textbook is more than a collection of facts and figures. There is a pedagogy that can only be developed through years of classroom feedback. Think of it this way, would you want to use a modern phone or one from the 1950’s? They both do the same thing, right? Of course they don’t. Similarly, might you rather use a textbook from the 1950’s? Of course not. Our understanding of how we humans learn is improving, as is the technology that helps us to create curriculum from which students can learn. The changes from one edition to the next may at times be slight, but over the life of a textbook, these changes really add up. So, we suggest you go for the latest edition you can afford. And thank you for your support!

We realized we can’t create any course as a one-size-fits all product. To optimize learning, different students should be allowed to move through a course at a their own pace. The exception to this is when students are purposefully working together, say, in a co-op. Otherwise, you’ll find there are no specific due dates for each class in a self-study course (as there are in an instructor-led course). You’ll also find that some classes will take your student longer to work on than others. Within a full version course, a class on Newton’s Laws of Motion, for example, might take up to two weeks. Within a customized course, it might take just a few days. So, we really mean it when we say “it depends”. You’ll see this reflected in the broad range of weeks we give as an estimated duration for each of these courses. Whether a student speeds through the course like a rabbit or mulls through it like a turtle that’s OK. In the end, both will have enjoyed the same amount of material that qualifies for a full years credit.

Our passion is to help students enjoy learning the basic concepts of science. For us, the question is: How can we do this in a sustainable manner using the platform of the 21st century, aka, the internet? Answer: Build an awesome website! Err, strike that. What we really need is not a website but a “course management system”.  

You need to understand there is a huge difference between a relatively easy-to-build website, such as LearnScience.Academy and an actual “course management system” (CMS), such as Conceptual Academy. Consider this, the quizzes you take at Conceptual Academy don’t exist until the moment you click the “Take Quiz” button. Upon your clicking the button, the CMS generates the quiz on the fly based upon who you are, where you are in the program, and when you are. Same for the calling up of the videos or of a particular course syllabus or when you look to your grade book. It’s all generated on the fly. It has to be to make the site versatile and usable for thousands of instructors and students, each with a different need at any given moment. 

Please consider, aside from monthly fees from our host servers, our web developer charges us $135/hr for the building and maintenance of Conceptual Academy, which took several years to build. That’s our math, which came in the form of hefty business loans and an unstoppable faith in the value of what we have to offer. The reality is that your using Conceptual Academy for an entire year allows us to pay for less than 1 hour of development cost. That’s pretty scary, but less scary than having a venture capitalist or our publisher breathing down our necks forcing us to compromise based upon market demands—we take our academic freedom seriously.

The support you offer is greatly appreciated as well as greatly needed. We just want you to know we’re working really hard for you behind the scenes. Aside from the development of the content itself, this includes the creation and development of the platform through which this content is presented—on the fly. Furthermore, we hope you can appreciate that our current fees are a small fraction of the tuition you would pay at a typical college for the same course run by an instructor who is not the author of your textbook and likely has less experience to offer than we are able to provide ourselves at Conceptual Academy.