Just started the On Demand Trial. Where are the videos?

[danield97]

Just started the On Demand trial.
Where can I find the individual topic training videos. I'm not talking about the "25+ video lessons for the new GMAT, available anytime" (essentially seminars) as listed on the Kaplan and Manhattan websites. Rather, I'm asking about the non interactive topic classes for each individual topic on the syllabus.

Any help much appreciated.

[StaceyKoprince]

Hi, welcome to the forums!

The 25+ class-length videos (about 30 hours of class time) are what makes up the video portion of the product. Both our live courses and our On Demand program use what's called a "flipped classroom" model (which is how a lot of grad school classes are structured as well). I'll explain how it all works (and why we do it this way).

We also use interleaving and spaced repetition, two "learning science" terms for study practices that help people retain a lot more of the material they're learning. Interleaving is about mixing up what you're learning, moving back and forth among topics; this is especially useful for the GMAT because it tests a lot of different things and it bounces around—basically, the next question could be about anything.

And spaced repetition is basically about having many opportunities to keep looping back to material and literally practicing recalling it—since that's exactly what you have to do on test day.

All three together (flipped class, interleaving, spaced repetition) allow you to have many "touches" on the material, which in turn allows you to retain and be able to recall a lot more of the material you're learning. This is really different from the traditional educational model that most of us had in high school or undergrad. (Teacher lectures, you do homework, a few weeks later, you take a test, then you forget it all until the final, then you cram for the final, then you forget it all again. )

Ok, here's how a flipped classroom works: For anything that involves facts and rules (ie, all of math and a lot of DI), you'll first do your reading assignments, along with a small number of non-official problems to practice the those facts and rules. Many/most of these topics are things that you've learned in school in the past, so you're really re-learning / reminding yourself for lots of this. This is your "first touch" on this material. (For Verbal material, you don't do this first step because there aren't facts/rules to learn, but all of the subsequent steps still apply to Verbal.)

Then, you come together with an instructor to test your understanding in complex scenarios—in the case of a standardized test, this means testing your skills on real test problems. So you come to class (or the class videos, for the On Demand product) already prepared with the facts/rules/strategies, and you use the instructor lesson time to practice all of those skills on real GMAT problems and learn at a more strategic level (eg, what are the different possible ways to do this problem, how do you know when to use a certain strategy, what are the common traps, etc.). This is now your "second touch" on this material.

After that video lesson, you practice those skills for a third time / "third touch" on Official Guide (OG) problem sets to solidify the skills that you learned—not just the facts/rules/strategies, but also how to apply them flexibly in timed situations. Also, at this stage, you're doing just a small number of each type of problem or content area; you're still saving a lot of your practice problems for later. (On the real test, they'll never give you a bunch of the same type of problem or the same content area all in a row. They'll make you jump around—and they *won't* tell you what's coming next. You have to figure it out every time a new problem pops up on the screen.)

Finally, a few weeks into the syllabus, you'll start to get mixed OG problem sets covering any/all topics that have been introduced so far. And this is now your fourth (or more!) touch on the same material. And it's beginning to be woven together with other material you've been studying, since the real test jumps around and can give you anything in any order—ie, it's all interleaved.

You'll continue to add practice that expands your skills from the earlier weeks, while you also learn new material each week. As you get even later in the program, you'll focus more and more on mixed sets (and, eventually, completely random sets, once you've learned everything for the first time)—basically, the more you know, the more the curriculum will shift towards mimicking the real test.

This structure allows you to "touch" the material many times (before the lesson, during the lesson, immediately after the lesson, and multiple times after that) rather than just twice (during the lesson, immediately after the lesson). This whole structure is a lot more effective for long-term memory from a learning standpoint.

By the time you get to the real test, you're going to remember / recall the information better because you'll have had many more chances to practice recalling and using it over time. And you'll also feel a lot more comfortable jumping around and doing whatever the test asks you to do next, because you'll have gotten your brain used to that while studying.

By the way, the flipped class structure is also how a lot of graduate school classes are structured as well. Your teachers generally aren't going to teach you the baseline facts and rules in class. Rather, they'll expect you to learn those things before class, and then class time is going to be reserved for higher-level discussions of how to apply those facts and rules to real-world scenarios.

If you have any other questions about how the program works or how to get the most out of it, don't hesitate to ask. And happy studying!