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Traditional courses generally teach arithmetic to adults in the same way that it was taught in elementary school. This method may create apprehension and can feel condescending. Recognizing this, FYMM courses were designed to jump right into subject matter with real life examples and a non-traditional teaching style. The learning material feels like nothing they have learned before, students become more engaged, intrigued by the material and their confidence spikes immediately. FYMM demonstrates the relationships between mathematical topics and thus helps students to form generalizations which help foster a deeper understanding.
The Free Your Mathematical Mind program assumes students have already been “exposed” to the basics of arithmetic and perhaps, algebra and geometry. Consequently, the program is not intended for young children.
Many math instructors teach as if the material is intuitive. Indeed most of these professionals never struggled with the concept of mathematics. They just “got it". For many math-phobic people in American society, these topics are not intuitive, they need logical explanations of why things occur in mathematics.
Discovering Math Rules: Rather than forcing mathematical principles onto students, the Free Your Mathematical Mind (FYMM) curriculum encourages students to discover the principles themselves through real life situations. Self-discovery not only helps with application of the material at hand, it also helps students retain the concepts over time as they now have a better understanding of the conceptual relationships.
FYMM takes a unique approach to teaching mathematics to adults. The primary goal of our courses is to build math confidence by utilizing an engaging and unique teaching methodology refined over 30 years which shows the rarely defined inter-relationships between mathematical topics. The courses are taught via innovative, web-based, interactive video courseware accessible anytime.
While Professor Allen does not present math topics in a traditionally discrete topic order, the course lessons must be taken sequentially. In fact, any deviation from completing the courseware as designed may actually reduce its effectiveness. Although it may not be immediately apparent to the student, everything in the courses are designed for a very specific cause and effect.
Our curriculum includes the following courses:
