Traditional approaches to education often lack diverse learning opportunities, particularly for neurodivergent students. These students require flexibility within the learning process to fully comprehend, absorb, and retain information. The typical classroom setting that places one goal upon a group of diverse students can feel confining and dampen the motivation of those who struggle to keep pace with their classmates. On the flip side, those who may find themselves ahead of the group can become frustrated and impatient, as if they’re being held back.
Private instruction or personal training is generally the gold standard of education or skill acquisition to remedy these situations. In private instruction, one can create a learning environment that is conducive to their specific, personal learning style. One of the main issues with private lessons is that they are only available to those that can afford it (which unfortunately, is historically unaffordable for many families). In addition, you had to coordinate your class time with the instructor, which has become increasingly difficult when multiple schedules are involved.
That is all changing thanks to the creation of ABLE. ABLE, which stands for Aptitude Based Learning Extension, is the first-of-its-kind challenge-based, asynchronous learning & skill development motivation platform.
So, what is ABLE technology?
In a nutshell, ABLE is a process that scientifically layers education and distills it into a concise number of challenges. These challenges represent the skill sets that the student must establish competency in to reach the next level. Compressing and distilling this knowledge allows students of all levels to progress at their own individual pace and move forward only when they are ready.
How does it work?
The creators of ABLE reached out to Achieve Martial Arts to explore the possibilities of integrating their technology. This partnership brought an entirely new experience to the martial arts world and has completely innovated the learning experience. Achieve Martial Arts wanted to offer their students the opportunity to study martial arts without the constraints of private lessons or the ambiguity of classroom learning, and ABLE has done just that.
As an example: Achieve Martial Arts decided to transform their white belt curriculum into seven skill-reliant challenges through ABLE’s platform. Competently performing each of these seven challenges will earn the student a yellow belt. Students study the challenge, they utilize whatever education they need to best conquer the challenge, they practice, and when they feel that they have it, they film and upload their attempt onto the platform. Students earn stars depending on how well they performed, and these stars help increase their progress meter. Once the progress meter passes the line, the student has achieved their new belt!
…but does it REALLY work?
The developers of ABLE put their system to the test using the Achieve Martial Arts studios in both California and Nevada. Creators integrated the ABLE platform against studios’ conventional training methods which included weekly private lessons. We had the students randomize between traditional training vs utilizing the ABLE technology, and the results were stunning!
As a reference point, students taking private lessons took an average of 40 weeks to get to purple belt. The students utilizing ABLE got there in less than half the time. For blue belt, the next step up, the students utilizing ABLE got there nearly 6 months ahead of the students taking private lessons. But what about the students’ performance levels? An independent grader, without knowing who was doing private lessons and who was on ABLE, graded both sets of students. As a result, the ABLE students scored 30% higher on all the skill challenges!
What makes ABLE so special?
ABLE has been shown to be better than traditional personal training, because ABLE utilizes the LASER advantage! Let’s break down the LASER advantage to show how ABLE shines:
The “L” stands for Link-Chain Learning. Often, it is hard to get motivated to learn something if you can’t see the point of learning. Imagine if you could see every step in front of you… all the way to your goal! How motivating would that be? On the other hand, how many times have you learned something, just to forget it shortly thereafter? Imagine having your “skill development” scrapbook there for you always to refer to. How much easier would the process of education be? Education pieces visibly “linked” together makes it more efficient and motivating. With Link Chain Learning, we draw inspiration from the future, and we learn from the past…so that we may achieve in the present.
The “A” stands for Aptitude Accelerator. How many times have you been in a class that was moving too slow, or worse, too fast for you? We all have things that we are good at, and things where we can use a lot of extra help. With our scientifically layered education and our challenge format, students can accelerate through the challenges they have an aptitude for, and comfortably take the time that they need to get better at the more difficult challenges for them. Imagine if school was like this! With our Aptitude Accelerator, you can really move at the speed of you!
The “S” stands for Skill Play. What would happen if our kids put the same focus that they put into video games onto their education or practice? Video games have mastered engaging all of the motivation centers of its participants. By doing this, kids can spend hours on video games without becoming bored. If we gamify education or skill acquisition, what could be accomplished? Well, we have done it! With our progress meter, leaderboard, and badge acquisition, students using ABLE practiced on average 5 hours more per week when compared to the students doing private lessons. With the Skill Play motivation, students tend to stay longer, work harder, and get stronger!
The “E” stands for EndGame Lesson Structure. The challenges represent the test to see if you are competent at the relevant skills. If you can pass the test without needing to take the classes, why waste your time? The EndGame approach has shown to be a great source of motivation and efficiency. By interacting with the test first, students can more easily identify their specific weaknesses, and they are able to tailor the education to their specific needs.
The “R” stands for RemoteGuide Training. Imagine having your personal trainer in your pocket for anytime, anywhere, and for any length of time! Time zones, inconsistent work or school schedules… even travel doesn’t hold you back from progress. We have all had those times in our lives where we are motivated to train at 11pm or 5am. We want to train for 5 days straight, and then take 2 weeks off. With RemoteGuide, anytime you want to train is the best time for your trainer as well!
ABLE…LASER…how can it work for me?
When you consider all the significant factors that go into effective education, we find the following categories:
- Community
- Efficiency
- Accessibility
- Motivation
And with that, we have 4 venues of immersion for the students:
- Traditional Classroom Education
- Private Tutoring/Training
- Online Library Education
- Online Motivation Experience – Video Games/Peloton
We can put all of these into a grid and analyze where the strengths are in each.
For COMMUNITY, a traditional classroom education as well as the Online Motivation Experience excel in this category, while Private Training and Online Library Education are generally minimal. However, with the ABLE platform students can “compete” with one another and share their victories while still taking advantage of the flexibility and ease of learning at home.
With EFFICIENCY, Private Training is the only category that excels, Online Education can be reasonable, but Classroom education and Video Games are minimal. With ABLE, the advantages of private learning are consolidated into a flexible learning path that imitates gameplay and ignites motivation!
With ACCESSIBILITY, Online Education excels, while Traditional Education and Video Games are reasonable. Due to the cost of Private Training, access is limited to those that can afford it. Thanks to the creators of ABLE, now students can access the individualized education that was out of reach for so long without sacrificing schedules or sanity!
With MOTIVATION, Video Games excel, while the personal attention of Private Training provides a fair amount of motivation. Unfortunately, Traditional Classroom and Online Education models do not typically have any significant means of external motivation. Once your student becomes comfortable with the platform, their motivation will skyrocket, and you will see firsthand just how well the ABLE system works!
When you take the LASER advantage that ABLE was built on, you see that ABLE excels in all these categories and more. There is not a learning system available that is more fulfilling or comprehensive when it comes to skill acquisition.
The results? Students are getting BETTER…FASTER with ABLE technology!
