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Afficient Academy is a technology-based education startup that is disrupting the traditional way of learning to achieve excellent results effectively and efficiently.
Afficient Academy, founded in 2014 in the South San Francisco Bay Area is devoted to developing a new generation of education programs based on modern technologies to empower students to excel. Afficient Academy’s flagship product Afficient Math is an intelligent, computerized math program based on US standards to learn math, helps students build a strong foundation but also as an individualized program, it lets students learn and progress at their own pace and advance ahead of the school curriculum.
To learn more about the company and its services we discussed with Dr. Jiayuan Fang, Founder, and CEO at Afficient Academy.
Q: After a successful educational career as a professor, and an entrepreneur founding a successful software company, why did you decide to start an education company in K-12 space?
A: I have been closely involved in my three children’s education for over 15 years. Same as many parents, I clearly realized it is not enough to just rely on the education from traditional schools, and after-school education is an important supplement. Through this period, I and my children have experienced many online and onsite after-school programs, however, I was not quite satisfied with existing offerings primarily because typical after-school learning centers still use the old-fashioned worksheets or workbooks and modern technologies are seldom used in education, therefore, the learning methods, as well as the learning efficiency remains at the level of 30-50 years ago. Although most of the online programs provide instant feedback to student exercises, generally lack supervision and mechanisms to allow effective interactions between teachers, students, and parents. Moreover, online programs lack the effective engagement between students and teachers that allow students to ask questions, teachers to observe the students and find out whether the students can solve the problems in the right way.
After thinking about how to develop a more effective learning program to overcome the shortcomings of existing offerings, I developed some ideas and decided to establish an educational company to develop a new generation of education programs in K-12 space.
Q: Would you share with us the methodology that makes your after-school program successful?
A: Our methodology is based on 3 main factors:
Personalized Learning, Intelligent System, and Result-Centric flow to achieve Excellent Results.
Our program is completely self-paced and personalized to each student. Through a comprehensive diagnostic test, we are able to identify a unique and individualized starting point for each student. For example, a 7th grader might need to review 5th and 6th -grade skills to fill certain gaps, or, a 4th grader who already has a good foundation in previous grades can start at the 4th-grade level and advance to 5th grade and so forth.
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Q: How do students learn new concepts from your computerized program?
A: For each grade level materials, we break them up into small-steps and easy-to-learn skills. We developed detailed computerized illustrations for each skill so that students can self-learn.
Once a student submits an answer to a problem, our computer system gives instant feedback, the student corrects the mistake subsequently.
Since our computer system has all the student’s learning records, it can systematically identify weak areas and select problems intelligently.
Through the constant analysis of all the data of a student, we give the grade level score of the student instantly. So a student knows how far he/she is from reaching the goal of the grade. The student continues to learn until the goal is achieved.
Q: How long do you expect a student to work on Afficient Math each week?
A: Our system generates a personalized weekly work assignment at the beginning of each week based on an individual’s status. We expect the weekly assignment to take about 3 hours to complete. When a student completes the weekly assignment, he/she can always request for extra assignments. There is no ceiling on how much a student can do in a week.
Q: What is the benefit for a student to go to the Learning Center?
A: At a Learning Center, a student can ask questions to teachers. While the student works on his/her assignment at the Learning Center, it also provides an opportunity for the teachers to observe whether the student really learns the skills. When a teacher finds the student not learning the right way or struggles, the teacher intervenes to help. Learning Center also offers a focused learning environment, and a face-to-face interaction between teachers, students, and parents.
Q: How is Afficient Academy different from other after-school learning programs such as Kumon, Mathnasium, JEI etc.?
A: Compared to those after-school learning programs, the main difference is we have an intelligent computerized program, which gives instant feedback, automatically finds weak areas and gives grade level scores. Therefore, our program leads to a much higher learning efficiency and better outcome.
Q: Khan Academy also offers a computerized math program and it’s free. So, how’s your program different as compared to Khan Academy’s program?
A: We have physical learning centers to provide face-to-face interaction with students and parents. For our remote students, we have dedicated math teachers to monitor and supervise their work. In addition, we believe we have a more advanced computerized program, with which students’ data is extensively analyzed to find out their weak areas and to ensure that students achieve an excellent outcome.
Recommended: Q: Does Afficient Math help with preparing for the middle school math placement test?
A: In most public schools, math classes are not divided into fast and slow tracks until 6th grade in middle school. The math placement tests are usually done during the second semester in 5th grade and also in 6th grade. How a student performs on this placement test impacts the courses he/she can take in middle school and more importantly in high school which affects college applications.
When students graduate from middle school, slow track students finish Common Core Grade 8, while fast-track students are two grade levels higher and complete Geometry. Fast track students are able to take AP-Calculus in 11th grade, and therefore when they apply for colleges in the 12th grade, they can report their AP-Calculus results, this can greatly enhance their chance of getting into their dream universities.
Our program can certainly help students efficiently review previously learned materials, identify and fill skill gaps, and quickly bring student’s math skills to excellent level. It can also let students advance beyond their current school grade to make them more competitive in the middle school math placement test.
Q: Share with us, what results have been achieved and what benefits are there with Afficient Academy’s program.
A: Our intelligent computerized math program makes learning highly efficient. Our learning center students typically take 2-4 months to complete one grade level which takes them one year to complete in regular schools. Many of our students, after being with Afficient Academy for 6 months, have fully reviewed previous grade materials and advanced ahead of their school level. Through our program, students build a strong foundation, succeed in getting into advanced math track at school, gain self-confidence, and find more time available to do extracurricular activities.
Here is an example of a 4th grader who was identified with some skill gaps in 3rd grade through our comprehensive diagnostic test. He started reviewing those skills in 3rd grade for 1.5 weeks. He completed 4th grade in 7 weeks, 5th grade in 8 weeks, 6th grade in 11 weeks and currently working on 7th grade materials. There are many examples of students who have managed to complete 2-3 grades within a year of starting in Afficient Academy.
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Q: What’s your vision for the company and what are the plans for Afficient Academy in near future?
A: We plan to open more Learning Centers in the Bay Area and elsewhere. We will also expand our business through franchising. Besides our Afficient Math program, we are currently developing computerized programs for other subjects and plan to deliver such programs in the near future.
Also, we recently launched our remote online program of Afficient math with dedicated tutor support for students who do not have the access to our learning centers which are currently located in the Bay Area. We believe that through our online learning mode we will be able to serve students outside the Bay Area, throughout the US and literally throughout the globe. Unlike other online math learning programs, our program has dedicated math advisors assigned to each student. The advisor will monitor a student’s activities constantly and contact the student and/or parents if any issues are noticed. The student may contact the advisor for questions or any technical issues in learning Afficient Math. If necessary, the advisor or parent may also initiate an audio or video session to communicate. To learn more about our online remote program, please visit.
We are pleased to share that we are able to attract students globally since we launched the program a couple of weeks ago. We are very hopeful that we will be able to reach many students and help them build a strong foundation, improve their math skills and ultimately reach their goals of getting accepted into their dream universities. Also, through our programs we hope to make learning more effective and more interesting, students achieve better results in less time, they enjoy learning more and have more time to pursue other interesting activities.
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