Musically Infused Talking Head Math Video Courses

Self-paced video courses for math education that contain a confluence of practice problems, video explanations, and math music videos.

The study of mathematics regularly fails to engage a large subsection of students, often because they lack a natural attraction to the subject matter. This is the result of three major pitfalls: (1) students are, by and large, unable to self-pace and subsequently end up falling behind their class; (2) instruction is not delivered with enthusiasm and clarity by most teachers; and (3) creative instruction using music and video is rarely employed with math instruction.

I aim to solve this problem by developing a suite of musically infused video math courses that solve all three of the aforementioned problems. Thus far, I have created thousands of videos and six video courses targeting math education. These courses have been used with great success across the globe by allowing for self-pacing while providing an engaging talking-head instructional video in concert with carefully crafted practice exercises. The final and most critical aspect of these series is the inclusion of math-based music videos. This fun, informative, and creative component provides an opportunity to engage students who feel frustrated by mathematics and how it’s traditionally taught. Folks who are convinced that they are not “math people” can take a fresh look at this subject matter and come to develop both a love and understanding of the subject. I have experienced this response many times over with my private tutoring students.

This system builds onto the Khan Academy model of teaching for mastery. While Khan Academy has a phenomenal interface and superbly well organized platform, it fails to engage a large swath of students because many find it dry. My video courses meet that need for engaging and fun content. By using clear visuals, thorough explanations, and a talking head (proven to maximize content absorption by education powerhouses like Udemy and Skillshare), my courses make math compelling, interesting, and most of all, cool.

My first fully integrated video course, which preps students for the math portion of the SAT, is currently available and has over 6,000 students enrolled worldwide (https://www.udemy.com/power800satmath/learn/v4/overview). The existing suite of 16 math music videos has garnered attention from media outlets like BuzzFeed, The Journal, and The Blaze (http://scalarlearning.com/press/). Additionally, this math music collection was recently nominated as a finalist for the Cool Tool Awards in 2018 by EdTech Digest.

Placing all of these resources together into courses for every math curriculum from 6th grade to 12th grade will revolutionize the way math is taught across the globe. Educators will be able to use these video courses across multiple math curriculums, enabling them to invigorate the student body, teach more effectively, and flip classroom learning. The goal is to make teaching more fluid and comprehensive while engaging pockets of students that are otherwise disinterested in the subject of mathematics.

Math video courses and math music videos have existed for some time. I aspire to use these existing forms of media at a refined level to produce polished educational content that rivals television quality content. I want to build math songs that students would actually enjoy listening to alongside their favorite mainstream artists. Pairing these music videos with tutorials that have strong explanations delivered by engaging instructors can build powerful math video courses that stand apart from existing courses. The unique musical spin will engage an entire pod of students that have been historically uninterested in mathematics.

My solution is inherently a technology based solution. I seek to build onto my existing library of math video courses and math music videos to create an all encompassing collection of vibrant and engaging math video courses. In order to develop these products, I rely on a confluence of audio and video editing tools along with video course platforms like Udemy. In later iterations, I hope to use AI to better direct customized practice exercises and suggested lectures.

I hope to expand the library of existing content so that it spreads from elementary math curriculums through all high school subjects. To build out the music videos as well as the tutorial videos might not be feasible, but I would like to aim to complete three to four grade levels in the next year. I have completed a fully integrated pre-algebra course independently, so expanding this blueprint is very realistic assuming I have necessary manpower and resources. Moreover, many of the requisite music videos for high school level math have already been created.

In five years, I hope to provide a one stop shop for all students looking to learn any math subject from K-12. I would like to cover all curriculums and textbooks, providing fun and energizing education solutions to students across all walks of life. I hope to have hundreds of math music videos across all major math concepts, specifically targeting those topics that require memorization of difficult formulas or operations.

My existing video courses exist on the learning platform called Udemy. Accordingly, they are accessible across the planet. I plan to follow the same model of accessibility as the volume of courses and content expands. All of these courses will primarily be created in English, but subtitles will be provided to broaden the scope of influence and access.

There are currently over 7,000 students signed up across my 6 video courses. These students have lifetime access, and have used the courses to prepare for the SAT, ACT, and ISEE exams. The courses have allowed students the opportunity to learn in a self-paced manner that provides for maximum absorption of tricky concepts and procedures. The math music video playlist on YouTube has garnered over 458,700 views thus far.

My goal is to broaden my number of students by 10x in the next 12 months. I hope to achieve this by both expanding my library of existing video courses as well as strengthening my social media presence across YouTube (2,000+ subscribers) and Instagram (18,000+ followers). As I continue to create content and expand my social media reach, I believe that I can eventually capture a much larger segment of those students seeking math knowledge from K-12. The eventual goal is to empower educators across the globe with this fun teaching medium that contains consistent educational principles.

The key factors that differentiate our content from other competitors in the video course creation space is our on-screen presence and capacity to create engaging math music videos. What makes our brand so potent is the fact that we have teachers capable of making a close connection with students via an effective and engaging teaching style as well as state of the art means and talent to produce effective and fun math music videos. We can make math cool, fun, and fruitful.

We currently sell our video courses on Udemy. They range in price from $20 to $200 depending on the length and complexity of the subject matter covered. For all sales driven through our own marketing efforts, we receive 97% of sales. For sales driven through organic searches on the Udemy platform, we receive 50% of the selling price. These courses are wholly owned by Scalar Learning; Udemy is merely a hosting platform. As of now, our plan is to house all of our future video courses on the Udemy platform because of the flexibility provided by Udemy as well as the mechanisms in place to generate quizzes and other supplemental materials.

I currently have an extremely lean model for course production, which is why I have not yet had to seek outside funding. The issue with this approach is that we are hindered by the bottle neck in production, which is essentially my team's availability. I want to take production to the next level by outsourcing planning, development, and editing. If this can be effectively achieved, it is foreseeable that a fully comprehensive suite of video courses covering everything in math from K-12 could be completed in under two years.

There are two main barriers: production capacity and visibility. I believe that our courses are already high quality with solid content, but there needs to be more material. "Solve" can help us push ahead and streamline production so that students can come back to us time and again throughout their educational journey to learn what they need to succeed in math. Secondly, we need more publicity to spread the word about our products, and we hope to use Solve to help us grow our social media footprint.