After 3 years of research and development, Dr. Flowers Test Prep and Logical Steps have launched the next iteration of our test prep platform helping students prepare for the MCAT online - DrFlowersMCAT.comA big thanks for all of those that worked with us - advisers, students, teachers, parents, consultants, designers, programmers & project managers. Geeze, Lynn, wherever you are, thanks! ASU and SkySong, thanks for being the conduit for much of our premed research.
In this release, we've moved away from a strict individualization of student curriculum and more towards a guided journey to what you need to know. We now let students select which journey they'd like to pursue from Cram Session to Physics Booster. We've reworked thousands of concepts in math, chemistry, biology, physics, verbal reasoning and writing to be compatible mobile devices. We've moved everything to the cloud. We added a massive "question pool". We built support systems and trained resources to grade essays our client's essay according to AAMC's metrics.
The research told us so much. We gave cameras to premed students to photograph and tell their stories of preparing for the MCAT. From this we learned that students have busy and varied lives, and may study anywhere and anytime. We conducted surveys of premed students that revealed weaknesses in our competition. Second hand research and monitoring of what's working in mobile, social media, web 2.0, etc provided the reality check for the underlying platform.
We also learned that there's a lot of good content online. Yet finding it and tracking what you've learned vs what is covered on the MCAT is tedious. And fitting that into a busy schedule means the value of online test prep courses now is how to make efficient use of students' time.
It was amazing studying so many educational theories and trying to fit them together to deliver an effective & coherent experience. This meant we had to iteratively rework the application dozens of times and occasionally have heated debates about which theories should be applied when, where and how. As my friend Waseem once told me, "figuring out what to execute seems to take forever; execution is the easy part."
I learned that performance on standardized exams has more to do with applied knowledge than theoretical knowledge. I feel the same applies to building an elearning system. Now, let's see how we did applying our knowledge in DFMv3.
