Frequently Asked Questions
Major advantages of Afficient Math are the following:
(1) Personalized learning
- Afficient Math is individualized and self-paced.
- Traditional schools are class-based and the whole class is at the same pace.
(2) Result-based
- Afficient Math is result-oriented. Students always know their grade level scores. After a student achieves his/her desired results, the course is completed. The student has mastered all the required skills for every grade studied.
- In traditional schools, students know their results only when the course is completed, whether they achieved good results or not. The gaps students have in lower grades are carried over and compounded into higher grades.5
(3) Self-learning and highly engaged
- In Afficient Math, students learn by themselves first. Students do exercises with immediate feedback, and correct their mistakes right away. Teaching or coaching is available if needed.
- In traditional schools, teaching is offered first in classroom setting. Student homework are graded days later and sometimes even not graded.
(4) Intelligent
- Based on the data of individual student’s work, Afficient Math intelligently generates exercises to improve weak areas and retain proficiency of learned skills. It optimizes the learning path to achieve excellent outcome.
- In traditional schools, lectures and exercises are not customized to individuals, and they do not guarantee a desired outcome.
(5) Efficient
- With Afficient Math, students typically take two to four months to complete a grade level and achieve A/A+.
- In traditional schools, after spending a whole academic year for one grade level math, most of the students are not able to get an A.
In comparison with Learning Center programs of Kumon, JEI, Eye-Level, MPM or Mathnasium, Afficient Math, leveraged with modern technologies, enables students to learn much more efficiently. Afficient Math provides instant feedback to student’s work, no need to wait for worksheet or workbooks being graded manually. Students learn from their mistakes and figure out correct solutions right after such mistakes are made. Afficient Math helps students to build strong foundations by systematically identifying weak areas in the lower grades and leads students to fill lower grade gaps efficiently; which is impossible to be done efficiently by manually tracking all the student’s work. Afficient Math constantly analyzes the data of student work and optimizes the problem selection to maximize the gain of the student at the corresponding stage. A student passes a grade level when his/her academic performance reaches his/her goal (typically A+) which is constantly and rigorously assessed by Afficient Math program. The contents of Afficient Math align with US Common Core standards, so it directly helps students to improve their performance in school math classes and tests.
In comparison with online programs of Khan Academy or IXL, Afficient Academy’s program combines the advantages of modern web-based software technologies with physical facilities where students receive face-to-face individual supervision and advice. With Afficient Math, students learn online at home as well as at the Learning Center. At the Learning Centers, the student’s work is monitored by the instructor, individual feedback is provided and the instructor works with each student to develop his/her skills, explain the difficult concepts and assist the student to achieve his/her goal in learning math. Through a Diagnostic Test, a student can be placed at a proper grade with a proper proficiency level to review lower grade materials efficiently. Afficient Math has a unique patented flow to ensure students achieve excellent outcome (A+). With this flow, student’s work is fully analyzed, weak areas are automatically identified, the proficiency level of the student is continuously improved towards the pre-set goal, problems for student to practice are selected intelligently to maximize the efficiency of achieving excellent outcome.
In comparison with Learning Center programs of Russian School of Math, Afficient Math is a personalized, self-paced program to fit each individual’s situation. A student can be placed at a proper starting point to review lower grade materials efficiently, and advances to higher grade levels at student’s own pace. Leveraged with modern technologies, Afficient Math makes the learning highly efficient. Afficient Math analyzes student’s work and optimizes the problem selection to ensure excellent outcome in each grade level for each individual student.
In comparison with online programs of John Hopkins’ CTY or Stanford’s EPGY, Afficient Academy’s program combines the advantages of modern web-based software technologies with physical facilities where students receive face-to-face individual supervision and advising. With Afficient Math, students learn online at home as well as at the Learning Center. At the Learning Centers, the student’s work is monitored by the instructor, individual feedback is provided and the instructor works with each student to develop his/her skills, explain the difficult concepts and assist the student to achieve his/her goal in learning math. A student can be placed at a proper starting point to review materials of a number of lower grades efficiently and cost-effectively. In doing Afficient Math, a student constantly knows his/her grade level score. Rather than assigning students a grade (A, B, or C) at the end of a course, Afficient Math works with students continuously and intelligently to achieve excellent outcome (A+) in completing the course. With Afficient Academy’s unique patented flow, student’s work is fully analyzed, weak areas are automatically identified, the proficiency level of the student is continuously improved towards the pre-set goal, problems for the student to practice are selected intelligently to maximize the efficiency of achieving excellent outcome.
Regular schools generally lack sufficient mechanisms to let high-performing students to excel. In addition, many schools do not offer their students sufficient basic skills training. Students who get “A’s” in schools are not necessarily solid in their math fundamentals. At Afficient Academy, a student starts at a point where he/she has skill gaps that need to be taken care of. A more advanced student is likely to start at a higher level based on the diagnostic test. With Afficient Math, after filling gaps and building a solid foundation in lower grades, students move on to exceed school’s levels at students’ own pace. Leveraged with modern technologies, Afficient Math makes learning highly efficient and ensures students become highly proficient on the subject matter. Afficient Math helps advanced students continue to achieve good results and get into accelerated math programs at schools.
Yes, Afficient Math is designed to take students from the levels they are ready at. Students can work from below their school grade levels, identified by diagnostic tests, and advance at their own pace. The program, leveraged with modern technologies, enables students get a solid foundation in math efficiently by automatically identifying and filling lower grade gaps. Afficient Math helps students trailing in their learning to catch up to their peers and even advance further on their own.
Yes. Each student proceeds at his/her own pace. A highly motivated student can devote more time and progress faster than other students. Leveraged with modern technologies, Afficient Math makes the learning highly efficient. It takes a few days to a few weeks to complete the review of a grade lower than student’s current school grade.
It typically takes two to four months to complete a grade the same or higher than the student’s current school grade. Through rigorous assessment, Afficient Math ensures students are highly proficient in one grade before advancing to the next grade.
(For example, the median number of days for 5th grade students to complete the review of all lower grade materials is 50.4 days)
(For example, the median number of days for 5th grade students to complete Afficient Math Grade 5 is 31.4 days)
Afficient Math is an online web-based program. We also have Learning Centers where students are monitored and receive individual supervision and advice. Each week students are given individualized weekly assignments of which most of the assigned work can be done online at home, while a certain portion of the work needs to be completed at an Afficient Academy Learning Center. Most of the students come to the Learning Center once or twice a week.
Afficient Math is not a one-to-one tutoring program or a group-class program; it is a computerized personal learning program. Students learn all the concepts and methodologies through carefully designed computer illustrations. Sufficient exercises are provided to ensure students understand the concepts and be able to reliably solve the problems. Students work at their own pace, and Learning Center instructors are available to answer and clarify any questions. Students complete their weekly-personalized assignment mostly at home, and come to the Learning Center about once or twice a week.
A student can work as long as they can concentrate. When a student visits our Learning Center, he/she typically spends 45 to 90 minutes per visit.e2
To ensure high quality outcome, in students’ weekly assignments, the parts of the work for (1) advancing to the highest proficiency level of each Skill and (2) completing the last score point of each grade are required to be performed at Learning Centers. We want to ensure that the work is done by students themselves and the students have learned the skills. At Learning Centers, it provides opportunities for students to raise questions, and resolve difficulties encountered in learning math.
If a student is unable to access our Learning Center for a certain period of time but still wants to do Afficient Math, such as during a home-country visit in the summer or in an out-of-town vacation, parent can request to re-set the student account to temporarily remove the restrictions on accessing parts of Afficient Math at home.
Students are encouraged to first solve the problem by themselves by going through the corresponding Demos in the Learning Session of the Skill. A student may need to go through a Demo more than once to fully understand the concept or procedure. We believe it is important to train students self-learning capabilities. If a student is still unable to solve the problem then parents can help. We encourage parents to bring the problem to the attention of our instructor next time they visit our Learning Center.
Yes, the weekly assignment provides a guideline on a moderate amount of work a student is expected to complete. Many motivated students do more than those specified in the weekly assignments.
As a student completes the weekly assignment, the program will prompt the student on whether he/she wants an extra assignment. When an extra assignment is completed, the student can further request additional extra assignments. There is no limit on how much a student can do in a week.
The student will receive a token for completing the weekly assignment. Extra tokens are awarded for completing extra assignments. Tokens can be redeemed for gifts displayed in our gift cabinet.
Leveraged with modern technologies, Afficient Math makes the learning highly efficient, which means it takes less time to achieve the same objective. However, to be successful in math, it is necessary for the student to commit an adequate amount of time in learning math. We expect a student to spend about 30 minutes, on average, per day on weekly assignments. The amount of work may be adjusted according to student’s needs and parent’s request.
“Honors” and “High Honors” are the two titles to recognize students who have successfully moved onto advanced subjects of Afficient Math with respect to their corresponding school grades. The figure below is Afficient Math Honors Chart. The horizontal axis is the School Grade of the student, and the vertical axis represents the Subject the student is on at Afficient Math. As students move into middle and high schools, they will be placed either in the non-accelerated track or one of the accelerated tracks. The “Honors” track of Afficient Math is aligned with the advanced math track of typical private and public schools. For example, 7th grade students will learn Algebra 1 and 8th grade students learn Geometry. The “High Honors” track is generally one subject level higher than the “Honors” track; which can be found as the most advanced math track in some academic-focused private schools. On the “High Honors” track, for example, 6th graders take Algebra 1, and 7th graders take Geometry.
Afficient Math Honors Chart gives parents an idea on how high students’ math skills should be aimed at. As a student first starts Afficient Math, he/she typically starts with reviewing lower grade materials to build a solid foundation. He/she then moves up and passes the non-accelerated track. We would like to bring students pass the “Honors” line and, for some highly motivated students, reach or pass the “High Honors” track.
To encourage their high achievements, students of “Honors” status will receive 50% more tokens than regular students as they complete or exceed weekly assignments, and students of “High Honors” status will receive 100% more tokens than regular students.
At the beginning of each week, we will send parents a weekly progress report through email on detailed progress your child made in the previous week. By downloading our cell phone app, you will know the real-time progress of how your child is doing in Afficient Math. On the Home page of Afficient Math of your child’s account, the current status of doing the weekly assignment is displayed. From the menu Report -> User Activities of your child’s Afficient Math account, you can find all the past activities. Our Learning Center instructor will always be happy to share with you the progress of your child. You can also request a parent conference to discuss anything related to your child’s study at Afficient Academy.
Yes, we do have word problems. Afficient Math teaches various problem solving skills specified by US Common Core standards. Apart from Afficient Math, we also offer “Competition Math” at some of our learning centers to train students for advanced level problem solving for math competitions.
The abilities to self-learn and focus. The will of striking for high achievement and not giving up on difficulties. The confidence of being a good and outstanding student through their own efforts.