Acellus IV is a new version of Acellus that is self-directed by the student. In earlier versions of Acellus, each student was forced to watch an entire lecture before attempting to solve any problems. Initially, this seemed to be a good approach because it would ensure that every student was properly exposed to all of the material. Efficacy studies revealed that this was not the case. Forcing a student to sit and wait for an entire lecture to complete, does not mean that the student is watching and paying attention to the lecture.

The power of the human brain to learn is quite amazing. In our modern world, students are bombarded with information simultaneously from many different sources. Even daily news broadcasters have discovered that viewers stay tuned longer when presented news stories on the main screen while a ticker tape of unrelated information is simultaneously presented. The human brain is incredibly capable of absorbing information from multiple simultaneous sources. The effectiveness of the brain’s absorption of information seems to be optimized when the student has the ability to control or direct when and how information will be received.

Because of the self-directed feature of Acellus IV, students are immediately able to begin working problems, even at the very beginning of each lecture. Case studies show that most diligent students will still watch the entire video carefully before proceeding to do the problems. The other 98% will begin immediately to solve the problems so that they can move forward to the next section. If they already know how to solve the problem, fine -- the lecture stops in the middle and the student is advanced to the next topic. If students do not already know how to solve the problems, they have a “need” for help from the instructor. It is at this point that they turn to the video, looking for information they need to solve the problems. The video player provides the students with the ability to fast forward or reverse the lecture as they wish. It is observed that on Acellus IV, most students will be jumping back and forth in the lecture, trying to find the information which they need to be able to solve a problem. Amazingly, in this undisciplined, unorthodox, scattered approach students seem to glean more information than sitting stoic, half awake in front of the entire lecture waiting for the computer to be ready for them to do something.

As part of its self-directed capability, Acellus IV allows students to move forward to the next lecture after attempting to solve the requisite number of problems, even if they did not master the material and answer the problems successfully. At first glance, this would cause any serious educator to become alarmed, since it would appear that important and required concepts were not being mastered.

A closer look at what is happening reveals that this is not the case. The students are allowed to progress under their own initiative and control up until the review immediately before an exam. At this point, the student knows that if they have not mastered each topic, they will do poorly on the exam. They will also learn that if they do poorly on the exam, then they are sent all the way back to the same material and they will be required to master it before they can move past the exam.

Amazingly, the majority of learning seems to take place in Acellus IV during the review in preparation for an exam. For each review problem, the associated video lecture begins to play. Students are now back at the point they skipped earlier, but this time with the knowledge that if they cannot answer the problems, they will not do well on the exam.

All in all, this self-directed strategy seems to really work. Students enjoy Acellus more, use their Acellus time more diligently, score higher on exams and perhaps most importantly, they do not get stuck on a lesson that they do not understand, becoming discouraged and fed up with learning the topic.