Approach
How the courses teach
Every Contemplanda course is built from the same materials: short lessons with graded practice woven through them, answers you construct, and a course map that shows the whole course at once. This page walks through each piece.
01
What a lesson is
A lesson is one continuous page built mainly from a few kinds of block. Exercises appear throughout, a few blocks apart, so practice lands while the idea it checks is still fresh, and every answer is graded the moment you submit it.
Reading
Short passages that develop one idea at a time, written to be worked through in one sitting.
Figures
Diagrams, plots, and tables placed beside the text they explain.
Video
Short segments in several courses, used where a moving picture carries the idea best.
Interactive models
Rotatable molecules and 3D scenes in the science courses, sitting beside the questions they inform.
Exercises
Graded questions checked on the spot, so you learn where you stand while the idea is still on the screen.
02
Practice you answer by constructing
Much of the practice asks you to build your answer, and the grading reads the thing you built: the points you placed, the region you shaded, the steps you ordered. A few of the formats:
Work on the graph
Place points, sketch a curve, or mark the feature a question asks about, directly on a live graph that grades what you drew.
Shade and transform
Shade the region an inequality describes, or shift and stretch a function until its graph matches the target.
Arrange the argument
Order the lines of a two-column proof or a derivation until each step follows from the one before it.
Build the diagram
Assemble a cladogram from the traits organisms share, or set up a Punnett square and read the ratios out of it.
Fit the model
Adjust the parameters of a model until its curve matches the data in front of you.
Tools of the subject
Write an electron configuration, balance a chemical equation, fill an area model, or run a chi-square test on a data set.
Across the catalog, exercises currently use 65 distinct formats, from the constructions above to classic ones like multiple choice and numeric entry.
03
Hints and mastery
Most exercises carry a ladder of hints, revealed one at a time, each a little more direct than the last. Opening a hint costs nothing: hinted work earns the same credit as any other work, because a hint that costs points is a hint students learn to avoid.
A smaller set of exercises follows the verdict with a worked solution: the full path to the answer, one step at a time. It appears after you have answered, since a derivation shown early gives the answer away.
Behind the practice, each skill you work climbs a ladder of levels. Levels are earned from graded evidence. The top level carries one extra requirement, so hints never lower a level, and mastered still certifies work you finished unassisted.
The mastery ladder
- 1
Attempted
You have started working the skill.
- 2
Familiar
You have gotten it right for the first time.
- 3
Proficient
The evidence has built up and you are on a run of correct answers.
- 4
Mastered
Strong evidence, a longer run, and at least one assessed exercise finished correctly without opening a hint.
04
The course map
Open a course and you see all of it: units in order, each a list of named lessons. Because every lesson has a name, the map reads like a syllabus, and progress means finishing named things you can point to.
In several courses, units close with a unit test, and a course can carry exam units of its own, such as semester midterms and finals, which sit on the map like everything else.
05
AP alignment
The AP courses follow the College Board’s published course frameworks. Each one names the College Board course it is built for, and its units are organized to match. The full syllabus for every course is on its course page.