Standard Deviants Accelerate - a Review

 

I have two children who are still homeschooling.  Over the past few months, they have wanted to do more of their schoolwork on the computer. They enjoy the predictability of computer lessons and the instant feedback they receive when doing computer lessons.  We were given a year subscription to courses developed by Standard Deviants Accelerate.  The company has online courses available for students in grades 3+.  The Standard Deviants Accelerate Homeschool Courses are user-friendly, internet-based courses designed for either supplementing your existing curriculum or being used as a stand-alone curriculum. 

We have been using some of the science and English courses as our stand-alone curriculum for the past several weeks.  Each course is priced as indicated in the graphic below (from the Standard Deviants Accelerate website: 

The format of the classes we have used is simple to follow.  Each lesson has a video to view, followed by questions to answer / quizzes or tests to complete.  Once I had access to the subscription, I had to manually enroll my students into the courses they were taking.  This was a fairly straightforward procedure once I got into it.  After the kids were set up, I just gave them a little tour of the program and they took off.  They simply had to watch a video lesson and complete the accompanying activities each day. They are able to access a transcript of the video lesson, too, if needed.  Easy to set up, easy to schedule. We have mainly focused on Biology, English Comp, Nutrition, and U.S. History.  The Biology and Nutrition courses are designed for middle school students.  The English Comp. and U.S. History are supposed to be for high school students.  Unfortunately, my kids really have not been happy with this program.  While they like the idea of online courses, they were expecting a higher degree of rigor to the courses.  We went into higher level subjects to explore and found the same type of video instruction across the board. My kids described the videos as “cheesy” and “babyish.”  Honestly, from the name of the company, I was expecting more rigorous coursework, too.  I was disappointed. 
     I think that for a student below seventh grade, the videos would be enjoyable and informative.  For high schoolers, the juvenile level of the instruction is a little insulting and not as informative as it should be. 

I think the concept of the courses is great and the format of the program in general is great; however, the videos need to be revamped.  If the videos were redesigned in a way that presented challenging material to students and required deeper thought, The videos are designed to be humorous, while teaching concepts; however, the depth of content falls a little short. I think these courses would be wonderful for high schoolers.  Using online courses like this could definitely prepare students for the world of higher education where many courses are either totally online or at least have assignment submission, interaction, and testing online.  This program was not a good fit for our family, but I think it could be a great fit for a family with younger children.  For a family that needs a portable curriculum due to illness, moving, etc…, Standard Deviants Accelerate definitely fits the bill.  
     Standard Deviants Accelerate is active on social media.  To keep up with them, click on the links below:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SDAccelerate
Twitter: https://twitter.com/SDAccelerate
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Google+: google.com/+Sdaccelerate
     My friends on the Schoolhouse Review Crew have been using courses from Standard Deviants Accelerate as well.  To read their reviews, click on the banner below.