What is Synergize Academy?

We offer private group tuition, with some twists.

Search for a class or "collab", become a member for free, then book ahead and try it out with no obligation to subscribe. Subscriptions give any number of people you nominate access to any collab, with plenty of flexibility, and discounts that grow with attendance.

Our collabs currently cater for children in Perth, Western Australia and include a range of ages and abilities. They are a unique, affordable way to complement existing school and home work, increase motivation and confidence while mastering the national curriculum and more.

We make learning part of a game. While it's perfectly natural for some students to offer or ask their peers for help, in practice it's sometimes discouraged. We leverage this mutual support, guiding, encouraging and incentivising students to coach each other.

This offers more consistent, systematic access to a range of viewpoints, explanations and encouragement styles. Everyone has a stake in the progress of others. Explaining ideas effectively is a necessary step toward mastery.

The Academy uses, supports and helps to develop Insynergy, an online, multi-player open-world game powered by learning.

Our instructors include experienced, registered professional teachers, and hand-picked tertiary and secondary students or recent graduates as tutors. They spend time getting to know new collab members, making them feel at home in our safe and fun learning spaces, and ensure productive and harmonious study, coaching and game play. They coach, step in if a student needs expert care, and provide enrichment for more advanced students, who do the most coaching.

Why?

We all learn at different rates and our motivations change during different moments in our lives. Education has traditionally been designed to work a bit like a conveyer belt. Students progress even when skills and knowledge are not adequately developed, and it's not always easy to catch up if you fall off. This approach also compromises a deeper understanding for more advanced students, leaving capability on the table.

With some exceptions, and for a variety of reasons, education has for too long been remarkably uniform across classrooms, schools, regions, and countries, no matter whether publicly or privately funded. Private tuition should offer a remedy but here too choices are limited and it can be difficult to find a qualified, affordable and effective tutor. In all these settings, too many students come to regard learning as a chore.

Even when intensive one-on-one tuition delivers gains, in the long run it is not well suited to fuel motivation and lacks the benefits of peer learning and social interaction. We apply insights from education theory and practice, psychology and behavioural economics to create an innovative approach that aims to be more efficient.

Synergize Academy is peer-basedThis involves students with a more developed understanding tutoring those who are still developing, as well as peer assessment of work., fully differentiatedWhere students are asked to do work tailored to their level of understanding, as opposed to everyone working at the same level., and teacher-supported with a focus on masteryWhere students are expected to achieve a relatively high level of competency before moving to the next level of difficulty.. This is in contrast to conventional teacher-focussed education where there is occasional structured peer learning, some differentiation (e.g. streaming) and mastery is the exception rather than the rule. The value of these things has been recognised by some for many years, but they have proven difficult to incorporate within existing frameworks.

Conventional private tuiton is tailored for the individual but the tutor is usually not a peer, and while mastery is more feasible, it is dependent on the skills and inclination of the tutor, and the amount of contact time.

Well guided peer social engagement is one of the key missing ingredients. We tend to seek approval from and connection with our peers, who it turns out can also provide an efficient and reliable mechanism for accountability.

How it works

Insynergy is a subscription-based game and all Academy students automatically become players. They can participate in an elaborate game economy by acquiring Synergy Coins ("syncs").

Syncs can be acquired, in rough order from most to least lucrative, via:

• Successful demonstration of capabilities to other players,
• Transactions with other players, notably for coaching,
• Public services, such as validating capabilities of other players,
• Individual and team challenges and competitions,
• A basic income,
• A universal inverse transfer payment whereby the lower your relative in-game wealth, the more you receive,
• Lotteries and random rewards,

Players have made a long journey from Earth to a star system called Synergy and work together to build a new society. They use limited resources to construct living spaces and industries in new environments. They can communicate and transact with each other, explore, start and invest in enterprises and participate in governance. What players see and how they can interact with the world and each other is age-band dependent. The world players explore and create evolves as they themselves grow.

Insynergy maps out learning journeys for a wide range of knowledge and skill ensembles ("kases"). These start with stepping stones that lead to more challenging milestones, and ultimately lead to integrated, inter-disciplinary landmarks. For example, the mathematics journey begins with arithmetic stepping stones, progresses to milestones such as graphing, and leads to landmark projects such as preparing a research paper. Players can tackle capabilities on their own but are encouraged and incentivised to engage other players as coaches, and to coach others. As well as being lucrative, demonstration of capabilities is also a pre-requisite for various aspects of game play.

Assessment of capabilities is distributed and cumulative. Any player who has sufficiently demonstrated a "stone" capability can validate whether another player has achieved mastery in it. This may only require the validator to confirm that the player is physically completing an automated online assessment, rather than a bot. Sometimes, the validator must create questions and assess responses. Landmark capabilities often involve published work that is appreciated and assessed more widely. There are no grades for stone capabilities, only hit or miss to a high standard. The assessment scheme must account for a range of contingencies and is designed to encourage and incentivise behaviour that strengthens the integrity of collective certification.

The Academy is built around supporting this central focus of the game. We use some terms that emphasise our unique approach:

	kase
Knowledge and Skill Ensemble
Like a subject, but better encompasses non-academic and physical skills.
	kasell
Knowledge and Skill Ensemble Learning Laboratories
A bit like a course, but without a sequence, since Academy students progress at their own pace.
	collab
Cooperative Learning Laboratory
A bit like a class, but collabs generate and adapt to evidence in order to enhance motivation and productivity over time.

Collab space and time are divided to allow study, coaching, explicit instruction, trials and other game play. We help everyone make the most of online learning resources. Some students start out doing no coaching, while those who have progressed further may sometimes spend as much time providing coaching support as receiving it. As a collab grows so too do the synergies. New opportunities for coaching, team game play and celebration of achievement emerge.

Nevertheless, we'll ensure that we have more professional teachers per student than the local school average for the same age range. By augmenting with capable tutors, we typically aim for one instructor for every 4-6 students, depending on the type of collab.

Pricing

The basic rate is $40 per hour and collabs last 2 hours. Book and try a collab with no obligation. Subscribe and we'll just back-date to your first collab. There are currently three options: Clover, Hive, and Oxygen for 4, 6 and 8 collabs per month. Commit for a month, after which you can modify, suspend or cancel: you're in control.

Subscriptions can be used for any collab and by any number of members (e.g. family) nominated by the subscribing member. Pre-booking of collabs is necessary so that we can arrange for the right staffing. Collabs are confirmed 24 hours prior to the start time. If you miss a collab or a part of it, we'll credit you the time to the nearest 15 minutes. Credits expire after 3 months.

You can save with subscriptions, but you can save even more as a Frequent Flyer. Subscriptions automatically adjust as Frequent Flyer levels change. Subscribers can achieve the maximum combined discount by reaching the Soar level. For example, an Oxygen subscriber can gain a 15% discount after just 12 months, thereafter paying only $34 per hour.

Frequent Flyer Levels

Frequent Flyer levels reward your committment to a new way of learning. A level drops back to the one below it upon expiration, measured from the last attendance.

Work for us

The Academy is looking to offer new collabs in various subjects at new and existing venues. Register your interest to become an instructor for new or existing collabs. Our initial subject focus is mathematics and info tech.

For professional teachers, it's an opportunity to experience and shape an exciting new frontier in education. We need even more high achieving tertiary or secondary students with excellent communication skills to register as tutors.