Accelerated Learning Programs: Benefits and Techniques for Elevating Education

The concept of accelerated learning has gained considerable traction in educational circles, particularly in light of the challenges posed by the pandemic and the need to address unfinished learning. Accelerated learning is not simply about speeding through the curriculum; it's about creating an environment where students are continuously challenged and engaged, maximizing their learning potential. It ensures that students are continuously challenged and engaged, maximizing their learning potential. It is important to identify the unique learning needs of students and provide ongoing learning opportunities for them. This article explores the benefits, techniques, and practical applications of accelerated learning programs, demonstrating how they can be used to empower students and educators alike.

Understanding Accelerated Learning

Accelerated learning is an approach that focuses on allowing students to progress through content at a faster pace than the traditional pacing of curriculum. Many students claim that they are bored in school because they are being forced to learn information that they are either not interested in, will never use, or they already know. Accelerated learning seeks to avoid boredom and stagnation in the classroom.

Accelerated learning, also known as biologically accelerated learning, seeks to facilitate and expedite learning based on better understanding of how the human brain functions, particularly in young adults. In today’s competitive world, the idea of accelerated learning has found favorable consideration in educational circles.

Origins of Accelerated Learning

The concept of accelerated learning goes back to psychiatrist Georgi Lozanov’s idea of suggestopedia. Lozanov points out that learning involves attitudes, not just aptitudes. Thus, he suggests that learning can be enhanced by decreasing anxiety and relaxing the learner. Lozanov’s theory is put forth ultimately for foreign language teaching and learning. Moreover, he suggests that merging psychotherapy and psychology could facilitate faster learning.

Key Principles and Characteristics

Accelerated learning involves two parameters: time and learning. The duration of accelerated learning is expected to be shorter than learning by traditional means. Accelerated learning results in better learning, which is accomplished through the active and collaborative involvement of the students.

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The characteristics of accelerated learning can be categorized under two headings: characteristics related to the learner and characteristics related to teaching situations. Accelerated learning seeks to place the learner at the center of the teaching-learning situation. It is nurturing and relaxing and is based on the learner’s inquiries. It is multisensory and humanistic; thus, it takes into consideration the learner as a whole. In other words, accelerated learning involves the mental, emotional, and physical being of the learner.

Giving the responsibility of learning to the learner and seeking to develop the learner as a whole person, the teaching situation should be multipath, should encourage collaboration among learners, and should focus on accelerating learning. Because learning occurs through the creation of neural pathways in the brain, accelerated learning attempts to create optimum conditions for creating and reinforcing neural pathways. Involving multiple senses is one instructional technique to optimize brain-based learning.

Developing an understanding of how different parts of the brain work can shed light into accelerating learning. Educational consultant and author Tony Buzan’s seminal work into the two halves of the human brain suggests that the left side of the brain focuses on mostly sequential activities and academic subjects like logic and mathematics, facilitating analytics and academics and the right side of the brain focuses on artistic activities such as art, color, music, and looking at things holistically, facilitating creativity and dreaming.

Researchers have identified four main learning modalities that combine the environment and the senses to achieve accelerated learning: somatic (learning through movement and touch), auditory (learning by talking or listening), visual (learning by seeing or illustrations), and intellectual (learning through finding solutions and reflecting). The Mozart effect is a concept arising from research on how using music to induce relaxation improves concentration. Using music or colors in a learning process stimulates both hemispheres of the brain, leading to stronger neural pathway formation. Accelerated learning aims to improve learning by involving all areas of the brain. Suppression of feelings and functions associated with stress and discomfort and achieving relaxation is important.

Benefits of Accelerated Learning Programs

Accelerated learning programs offer a multitude of benefits for both students and educators. These programs are designed to address the unique needs of learners, providing them with the tools and support necessary to excel academically and personally.

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Personalized and Individualized Learning

As the principal of a reengagement center, the goal is to provide students with a nontraditional, personalized, individualized, and innovative program of study. Here are some ways accelerated learning is applied in the program.

Individualized Graduation Plans: Every student has an individualized graduation plan. We identify how many Carnegie Units (credits) the student has earned toward graduation; what credits they still need; and based on our pacing guide, we determine their expected date of graduation. This gives students a visualization and an example of working to achieve a goal.
Student Interest: Student interest is also key. This year, we partnered with a local university to provide an esports program for a group of students. The group would visit campus one day per week, and the professor would also dedicate time to “game” with students after school hours. The incentive to attend each session was weekly progress in coursework.
Student Voice: Student voice is also a large component of accelerated learning. As I mentioned earlier, students suggested the Marvel Universe class. We have student voice sessions, which we refer to as success chats. Students have small discussion groups with their success coach or another trusted adult and give feedback on things they like, don’t like, or what they’d like to see included in the program.

Engaging and Challenging Learning Environment

Accelerated learning ensures that students are continuously challenged and engaged, maximizing their learning potential. It is important to identify the unique learning needs of students and provide ongoing learning opportunities for them.

Development of Critical Skills

The intensity of an accelerated program necessitates the development of time management, organizational, and critical thinking skills.

Addressing Unfinished Learning

In today’s educational climate, teachers and administrators often find themselves expanding their skill sets into new and unexpected territories. Accelerated learning has proven to be a popular strategy for addressing issues associated with unfinished learning stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Techniques and Strategies for Accelerated Learning

Implementing accelerated learning effectively requires a multifaceted approach that incorporates various techniques and strategies. These methods aim to create an engaging, supportive, and challenging environment where students can thrive.

The Accelerated Learning Cycle

Many learning acceleration programs make use of what’s known as an accelerated learning cycle. The last phase then feeds back into the first.

Effectively analyzing benchmark data to discern students’ strengths and growth areas relative to targeted standards is a vital part of the process. These assessment mechanisms should be standardized and thorough enough to pinpoint learners’ abilities.
Lead with learners’ strengths. Likewise, a core principle of learning of acceleration from the New Jersey Department of Education states that depth of understanding-not pace-should be a key metric for student progress.
Effectively form and work with small groups to provide varied support based on individual students’ needs.
Many students are struggling to feel as confident today as they did before the pandemic. When these learners hit roadblocks, a sense of frustration can overtake their ability to persevere while solving a problem. Curriculum-aligned support mechanisms-such as reflection prompts, subject journals, and goal-setting schematics-can help students develop a greater awareness of their own educational journeys and discover how far their efforts have taken them.

Practical Strategies for Educators

Use Grade-Level Standards: Teachers using grade-level standards with all students regardless of the student’s ability. Teachers intentionally planned scaffolded strategies for the diverse students in their classrooms. They internalized their lesson plans by marking where students would need extra support. They also strategically planned their collaboration with resource teachers, teacher aides, and special education teachers in their regular classrooms to meet shared learning goals for students.
Share Learning Objectives: Learning objectives were shared, displayed, reviewed, and discussed with students throughout the school to help them understand expected learning outcomes.
Facilitate Learning: Teachers were the facilitators of the learning, often walking around the room to offer real-time support to students.
Encourage Active Learning: Students exhibited the “heavy lifting” of learning by grappling with the challenging and demanding aspects of the academic work. Students engaged in problem-solving, critical thinking, and in-depth analysis. Productive struggle was evident, and student mistakes were used as opportunities for growth and learning.
Culturally Affirming Environment: The learning environment was culturally affirming throughout the school for the diverse students represented. There were relationship-nurturing activities such as warm and inviting dialogue exchanges in the classroom. We witnessed praise and acknowledgment from student to student and student to staff. We observed several teachers across the school engage in more wait time and eye contact, using whip-around strategies to provide equity of voice and student agency.
Real-World Applications: Teachers used real-world applications as students discussed the economy and its implications for their home community. The extension of learning occurred through real-world application, and technology was used to enhance, not replace, quality teaching and learning.
Don’t try to cram learning: Practice makes progressDon’t try to cram learning into a few days, or even a few weeks. Kids should be mastering skills every day, and over time. The key is to space practice out over multiple shorter sessions, rather than cramming it into one long session. Give students time to “forget” in-between sessions. This results in deeper learning when the information is encountered again. And remember: Not just any practice leads to mastery. Deliberate practice with feedback is critical. Students need to act on the feedback to achieve success.
Harness the power of tech: Technology motivates students, encouraging them to push through challenges. For instance, Waggle offers gamified math and ELA activities. Writable uses personalized feedback to guide students through the writing process. Digital tools can give teachers a quick snapshot of student progress: how well they're grasping concepts and where they need help. With this data, a teacher can differentiate instruction, reaching students across a range of academic experiences.
Do assessments, not too much: Some assessment is necessary to determine which students will need a little extra help, and which ones will need to be challenged. Formative assessments are low-stakes (no grades) and timely (taking place as students are learning). They are a good way to personalize instruction in the moment. Interim ELA and math assessments help teachers identify which students have learning gaps and which are ready for more-advanced material. Interim benchmark assessments like HMH Growth Measure with Waggle are a good start.
Skip assignments, lessons, and quizzes: Teachers can skip assignments, lessons, and quizzes in the online platform when they have covered the content through direct teaching.

Examples in Practice

English/Language Arts Classroom: In a 6th grade English/language arts classroom, the teacher used multiple approaches for students to access the text The Crossover (Alexander & Anyabwile, 2019), including audio recordings, narrations, think-pair-share groupings, and reading buddies. She used a variety of instructional real estate, including anchor charts and story maps, to aid student learning. Moreover, students were active, not passive learners, as they discussed, exchanged ideas, wrote, and reviewed notes. When questioning students, the teacher offered many opportunities for critical reflection through turn-and-talk and think-pair-share interactions.
Mathematics Classroom: In a 7th grade mathematics classroom, the teacher posed questions to the entire classroom, avoiding one-to-one responses and encouraging all students to problem-solve using their manipulatives. Students explained their processes for achieving answers to complex math tasks. The student discourse was rich, and students were actively engaged.

Accelerated Degree Programs for Adults

Going back to school as an adult comes with a laundry list of different considerations: Do you have the time? Can you afford it? You may be surprised at how much the world of higher education has changed over the past several years. That's why accelerated degree programs were created. Self-motivated learners can streamline their education with a unique, course-by-course cohort model, allowing you to become an expert in your subject while building the foundation for a robust professional network. Bellevue University's online classes were designed so that students could have a quality learning experience in a format that fits their schedules and lives.

How Accelerated Degree Programs Work

Accelerated degree programs are designed with the understanding that time and budget constraints are common hurdles for working adults looking to further their education.

The primary concerns for adult learners are time and money. Going back to school can be a big commitment. Each school will structure its programs differently, but at Bellevue University, students register for all their courses at the beginning of their time in the program. They then move from one course to the next with short breaks between sessions.
Adult learners are no strangers to balancing several different responsibilities at once, whether it's full-time work, parenting, community involvement, military service, or any combination of the above. But accelerated degree programs allow students to fit their learning into their schedules rather than having to schedule their lives around their learning. Focusing on one class at a time makes it more manageable to complete rigorous course work without putting your other responsibilities on hold. Another benefit to accelerated degree programs like the ones at Bellevue University is that they don't operate according to a traditional semester model.
Your instinct may be to believe that an accelerated degree program will inevitably come at the cost of valuable faculty interaction and peer collaboration. But that's not the case at all. You'll then be able to advance through your entire program course by course in a highly interactive learning environment with a supportive community of peers.
The way accelerated degree programs allow students to work through their course work one class at a time has some obvious benefits as far as your schedule is concerned. Because the time-to-completion is expedited, the course work in accelerated programs can be rigorous. At schools like Bellevue University, students in the accelerated degree programs also have access to all the same academic resources traditional students do, whether studying in person or online. There's both an on-campus tutor center and a Zoom tutoring option. Students also have access to the school's Writing Center, which offers many forms of writing assistance, including brainstorming, idea development, organization, documentation styles, and more.

Benefits of Accelerated Bachelor’s Degrees

Tailored Curriculum: Accelerated programs often provide a tailored curriculum that aligns with specific career goals.
Faster Career Progression: Entering the workforce earlier than peers can provide a competitive advantage, allowing for quicker career progression.
Networking Opportunities: Accelerated programs often attract driven, like-minded individuals, creating an environment ripe for networking.

Addressing Learning Gaps with Accelerated Learning

As schools plan for this coming year, here are some reasons why learning acceleration, and not remediation, should be the foundation for student learning recovery, experts say.

Why Accelerated Learning Over Remediation?

Less Struggle, More Learning: Analyzing data from more than two million students in more than 100,000 classrooms using Zearn’s online K-5 math platform found that students in remediated classes struggled 10 times more than students in classes that chose acceleration. Students in accelerated classrooms thrived, completing 27% more grade-level lessons than their remediated peers, and mostly regained their pre-pandemic success on grade-level math. Meanwhile, remediated students not only continue to struggle, but fall even further behind in their learning, getting caught in a cycle of missing more and more grade-appropriate content.
More Equitable: The TNTP study found that students of color and those from low-income backgrounds were more likely to experience remediation than their white, wealthier peers, with 1 in 6 students remediated regardless of their success on grade-level content earlier in the year. On the other hand, learning acceleration can have the biggest benefit for these same students, with the study finding that classrooms in schools with a majority of students of color completed nearly 50% more grade-level lessons than remediated classrooms.
Teacher Buy-In: While it is important to invest in infrastructure like high-quality instructional materials for students, training and supporting teachers is required to ensure that accelerated learning actually happens in the classroom. Czupryk says when teachers are able to see what students can produce through accelerated learning, even the most skeptical are convinced.

Real Tutoring for All Students

Schools and districts where students missed significant academic instruction can still implement accelerated learning along with additional supports. At the Guilford County School District in North Carolina, remediation was never an option. Instead, they launched a district-wide tutoring program to support students and teachers.

“We didn’t want tutoring to be homework help. Students needed just-in-time support to see where they were getting stuck,” says Guilford’s chief academic officer Whitney Oakley. “For example, we had a middle school student who improved her math grade by 30 points after just five weeks of tutoring. She was trying to figure it out on her own and couldn’t do it,” but the personalized help from her tutor helped fill in the gap.

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