Your Learning Management System (LMS), such as Blackboard or Canvas, is a vital component of any modern science course, serving primarily as a platform for daily online communication with students. Conceptual Academy, as a “content Management system” (CMS) is where students are introduced to the content, such as physics, chemistry, and biology. While students visit Conceptual Academy regularly, from the instructors point of view, Conceptual Academy works in the background throughout the semester. As an instructor, you might log in on occasion to see how students are doing, to tweak the lesson dates or an FYI page. However, it’s only at the end of the semester that you’ll need to download the Conceptual Academy point totals, You then upload the scores as a single assignment within your LMS.

At the beginning of the semester, it works well to let students know you are going to assume that with consistent study habits, all students will be earning 100% on their Conceptual Academy assignment, which measures their level of effort. You enter this into your LMS gradebook. This is helpful in that it sets an expectation, but, mostly, it allows students to see a fair representation of their overall class grade as the semester progresses. Note: about three-quarters of students typically reach this 100%. 

Absolutely. Even when students have read the book and watched the video lectures before coming to class, what happens is this: What they just learned is NOT on the tips of their tongues. If you start class with a quick review (aka Power Lecture), then 1) They’ll benefit from hearing the same ideas once again but “live” and from your unique perspective, and 2) They’ll then be geared up to start on any learning activity you throw at them, such as team-based problem solving. How much you lecture will totally depend upon the nature of the material. In some cases, a full class lecture will be optimal. Fission and fusion is a good example. In other cases, such as with the transmutation of elements, a short 15 minute power lecture is all that’s needed before moving into a planned activity, such as our Practice Page worksheets.

With Conceptual Academy, you have the liberty of focusing primarily on the traditionally more difficult material. At the start of the semester, for example, let Conceptual Academy introduce your students to the methods of science, while during class your focus is placed on the more challenging ideas of conversion factors through 1) straight lectures and/or 2) activities.

Absolutely. Let us know your needs and we will accommodate. If you’re already finding our textbooks to be helpful, then there’s a strong chance that Conceptual Academy will be a perfect fit for taking your teaching to the next level. We are fully supported by student enrollment fees that we work to keep as low as possible. Let us know if there are special financial requirements at your campus. Please know that we can work with your bookstore for any “instant access” program or with creating vendor codes. Also, at your request, we can discreetly provide grants to individual students.

Your Conceptual Academy syllabus is set up within Units. Each unit typically corresponds to one of your major exams. Within each unit are “Lessons”. Each lesson roughly corresponds to each of your classes or, perhaps, a week of classes. Each lesson has a date. That date is a soft due date. The student needs to answer all the reading and video quizzes of that lesson by midnight of that date to earn maximum points for their correct answers. If it is after that date, then the student may get the question correct (as shown by a green check mark) but they might earn fewer or no points. The default is a 2/1 setting, which means students earn 2 points for each correct answer before the lesson date and 1 point afterward. You can adjust theses point settings to however you wish within the grade book settings tab.

To change the lesson dates, sign into your instructor account. Click on the Course Admin tab and then click the “edit” link. Scroll to the bottom and you’ll find the “Set Lesson Dates”.

At the college level, our programs are used primarily for non-science majors fulfilling their science requirement. Because of this orientation, our programs are also widely used at the high school level, sometimes as a college-prep, and sometimes as a robust introduction to science, but never as an AP level course. At the high school level, our courses work well as an introduction for students who are science shy as well as those who are science eager. With any of our conceptual programs, ALL students gain a solid foundation in the basic concepts of science.

More importantly, you’ll have the tools to help students enjoy the process of discovering our natural universe. Why is the sky blue? How is there gravity in space? What’s the difference between a virus and a bacterium? Why is Earth’s interior so hot? How is a solar system different from a galaxy? How do drugs work? Why is CRISPR such a revolutionary technology? For that matter, what is DNA? How does radioactive dating work? How can boats made of iron float? What is color? What is sound? What’s inside a bubble of boiling water? What is the nature of time?

Snow happens, floods too, as well as illnesses. Conceptual Academy is there as an added means to help keep the class moving forward, even when you or the student is home with a bad cold. Gesundheit.

Step 1 is where the student is first introduced to the content by way of reading (as per the textbook), watching or listening (as per lectures, live or online). Step 1 is passive. The student is absorbing information. Their mouths are typically shut while their eyes and ears remain open. Step 1 is an input process. The student gains a broad overview of what’s what, but not much more.

Step 2 is where the student tries to articulate what they think they learned from Step 1. In this, Step 2 is an output process. It’s active. It’s also much more difficult. If Step 1 is learning about different types of exercises at the gym, Step 2 is suiting up and actually breaking sweat doing those exercises. How does it feel? Typically, not very comfortable. Students will do all they can to avoid Step 2 learning. Homework is Step 2 learning. An exam is Step 2 learning. But Step 2 learning is ultimately important if the learning is to be deep and durable.

Our textbooks, video lessons, and podcasts are tools for Step 1 learning. We can also call this “content delivery”. Ideally, the time you spend with the students in class and during office visits has a focus on Step 2 learning. Likewise, the time students spend with each other in class and in study groups, also has a focus on Step 2 learning. They’re solving problems. They’re explaining ideas. We call this “content facilitation”. In practice, Step 1 and Step 2 learning are integrated. After reading a paragraph (Step 1) the student tries to articulate (Step 2) what they just learned from that paragraph. Your class may start with a power lecture (Step 1) but conclude with a team-based learning activity (Step 2).

Sign into your instructor’s account. You’ll be brought to your profile page where you’ll be given a birds eye view of all you’re able to do as instructor. Click on the “Course Admin” tab within which you’ll see a link to the class grade book. Once within the grade book, scroll to the bottom and you’ll see a .csv button to export the grades. . . or you can just copy/paste the data from your browser window. Within a spreadsheet, you’ll tab, space, and/or comma delimit to get the data into columns. Work with the scores as you wish. For example, you might collate them to exam scores to create a scatter diagram, which is helpful for catching at-risk students.

Sign into your instructor’s account. You’ll be brought to your profile page where you’ll be given a birds eye view of all you’re able to do as instructor. Click on the “Course Admin” tab. Then click the “edit/clone” link for the course you wish to clone. Scroll to the very bottom for the clone link.

Click the clone link. The system will ask you for a new course name and course ID, which must be unique and easy for students to type, such as SmithSp26. Upon cloning, all changes you’ve made to your course will be duplicated in your newly cloned course. All that’s different is a new name, course ID, and an empty roster waiting to be filled with a new batch of students.

Cloning is useful for setting up additional sections within a single semester. First, get one section all set up as needed. This includes setting the lesson dates. Then clone that course for subsequent sections. This allows students from different sections to appear in different Conceptual Academy grade books. Cloning is especially useful for getting ready for a subsequent semester. Please note: It’s good to “unpublish” the original course after you clone. Otherwise, your subsequent students might inadvertently sign up for a previous semester. To publish/unpublish go to the “Additional Details” section of the syllabus editor.

Sign into your instructor’s account. Click on the “FYI Page Builder” tab. You’ll then see a list of all your FYI pages. Click the “edit” link to modify a particular FYI page. It’s likely your FYI pages have already been pre-populated with study advice and documents. You can edit/modify them as you wish. The text window can be expanded: drag downward on the lower right corner. Please note the WYSIWYG editor is not a perfect WYSIWYG editor in term of paragraph formatting. You may need to jump back into the editor to get the paragraphs looking perfect.

Click the “Source” button within the header of the edit window. This will bring you to the HTML5 code. It’s in this mode that you can paste HTML5 snippets.

In all cases, scroll down to the bottom to click the SAVE button after any change.

Also note: It’s important to solifidy the sequence of classes (in the syllabus editor) before modifying the FYI pages. Reason: The lessons and FYI pages are not linked. If you reshuffle the lessons, the FYI pages won’t follow. Thus, if you do re-shuffle the lessons during the middle of the semester, you’ll also need to realign the FYI pages so they match. If you need help with this, please reach out to us at Support@ConceptualAcademy.com.

Sign into your instructor’s account.Go to the Course Admin tab. You’ll see a list of your courses. Click the grade book hyperlink for that course. You’ll see a set of sub-tabs. To the far right, click on the “Settings” sub-tab. Scroll down and you’ll see where you can set the points earned for the video quizzes, reading quizzes, and Homework Practice Sessions. For each, the default is 2/1.

Note: The grade book is merely a tally of points earned. The points per quiz setting is merely the rate at which student earn points at the present moment. Changing this setting will not impact previous quiz scores. For these reasons, as a special event, you might consider changing from 2/1 to, say, 6/1 for a week. Let students know that for this one week period, because they have been doing so well, you have decided to reward triple the points for their learning efforts. You can call this “triple week”. While you’ll know that you’re just playing with them (like throwing catnip to a cat), the students will be most receptive.

Sign into your instructor’s account. Click on the “Course Admin” tab and then look for the “Members” link. It’s within here that you can modify the status of a student, which includes dropping them from enrollment.

As an instructor, you have all the tools needed to create a Conceptual Academy course from scratch and we are here to help you in that endeavor as needed. However, creating a course from scratch is complicated and time consuming. That’s why we highly recommend you simply send us your desired class syllabus and we’ll do this for you.

All support comes directly through us. For the instructor we are here for you on a one-to-one basis. Phone calls can be most efficient for implementation questions. Emails are great for more technical questions. For students, we handle all tech support. When they click the “contact us” link, that sends an email directly to us via Support@ConceptualAcademy.com. Interestingly, the most common inquiry, by far, has to do with the student not remembering their username.

By far, the number one reason a student is not able to sign into their account is because they are not using the username they chose upon registering. This username may or may not be an email address. In fact, students typically do NOT use their email address when registering at Conceptual Academy. Later on, they then try to sign in using their email address as their username. To their surprise, it doesn’t work. So they then try to reset their password. But then that doesn’t work either. Why? Because the password is not the problem. The problem is the username. They need to enter the username that they initially chose, which may or may not be the email address. Across the web, this is a common problem, though very understandable problem . . . given all the zillion of username we each now need to keep track of.

If your student is having trouble signing into Conceptual Academy, please send them to us via Support@ConceptualAcademy.com.  We’ll get it cleared up asap.

Yes they can. Most don’t. But a few do. For the reading and video quizzes, we don’t currently have the functionality to prevent this. We recommend you recommend to students that they stick with the program. They may be super enthused and tempted to go through ALL the videos within the first month. But that’s not good. By the time you get to Chapter 9, it may have been 2 months since they watch the video lessons on Chapter 9. This is not helpful.

Far more helpful is when the student stays on pace not falling behind, nor jumping ahead. For the Homework Practice Sessions (HPS), we DO have a system in place that can prevent students from jumping too far ahead. Sign into your instructor account. Then click on the Course Admin tab followed by the edit/clone link. Open up “additional details” and you should see where you can set the number of weeks before a student is allowed to work on an HPS. The default is 4 weeks, which means each HPS becomes available to your students 4 weeks before the lesson due date.