Ascent is for learners 

We are all unique! Learners come in all shapes and sizes and Ascent is designed with this in mind. Ascent is driven by a community of fellow student peers who are ready to collaborate with you on your and their learning journeys. Ascent is for everyone, no matter where you are on your learning journey. If you’re struggling to get started, you’ll have peers who are eager to help you understand and become thought-partners in answering some “bigger” questions about the world around us. If you’re a self-starter, a very effective way to learn and remember information is for to teach it to your peers.  

Research by Harvard economists has shown that we are more likely to improve when those around us improve too. Through this Competitive Advantage using Ascent would mean that you and those collaborating with you would improve in performance and move up to a higher level of understanding, teacher and subject matter engagement. As result the overall level of conversation moves from e.g. “Oh, do we really have a test this Friday” to “How did you interpret the teacher’s comment today about neurogenesis in older adults given what the textbook says about the brain’s lack of plasticity beyond late childhood?” 

Ascent is for parents 

As parents ourselves we know the immense value in getting our kids off to the best start with their education. For them, it should be so much more than just attending classes – it’s about discovering and nurturing friendships, developing effective study skills to free up time for other pursuits, planning ahead and understanding opportunity costs for choosing one activity over another, managing time effectively, etc. Hopefully it’s also about helping your kids realise their true potential and achieve the success that you yourself can foresee for them without taking away their fun of growing up. 

We also know that each child is unique and will face unique challenges on their learning journeys and in gaining confidence in themselves. Through extensive conversations with students and their parents, we designed Ascent with these unique needs in mind. Some kids struggle to get motivated and as the anxiety of getting left behind their peers builds they end up spending unproductive hours on social media instead of studying. Despite being bright, many kids haven’t yet awakened their passion for learning new topics, applying their knowledge to the world around them and enjoying the rewards of helping their peers improve too. At another extreme some kids are self-starters, who already find the lessons dull and uninspiring. They crave the stimulation of peers who can sufficiently engage and talk about the “bigger” questions that they themselves have been puzzling over. Ascent is designed to help across all abilities. 

Besides wanting what’s best for our kids, we too are busy with our own lives! And while we want to stay connected with what they are learning, we don’t necessarily want to have to coach them ourselves on whatever learnings the teacher has struggled to impart during class. Ascent is student-led and student-driven, so your kids will be getting plenty of practice explaining to and discussing with their peers what they are learning. Research suggests this helps them to better learn and remember the subject matter of their studies. By actively debating and deliberating over these study materials in regular peer discussions they’ll also be developing thinking and communication skills – e.g. knowledge-based reasoning, persuasive argumentation and summing up with concise conclusions. As parents you can take more of a backseat and when they next talk to you perhaps they’ll be more fluent in explaining what they’ve been learning. When the pressure to time-manage and mentor your kids is taken off you as a parent, you could therefore spend more time enjoying the stimulation of their conversation and expanding their life skills. 

Ascent is for teachers 

At Ascent, our past experience in university teaching tells us how rewarding it is to have engaged and motivated students who are curious about the subject matter, bursting with questions and eager to gain a better understanding of the world around them. Our experience in exam grading also tells us how such classes of motivated and engaged students will tend to achieve a better overall understanding of the materials taught and more successfully apply their knowledge to the world around them. 

It’s also easy to see how this could be good for the school’s or university’s overall success: just think how these higher achieving students would be the future ambassadors of the school/university as well as advocates for your inspirational teaching! 

Ascent is for App users who appreciate efficient technology solutions 

Some apps are slow and annoying – often such apps are actually webpages that are ported over to run on your mobile device. Instead, our professional programmers built Ascent as an application that is compiled to run natively on your Apple iOS or Android OS devices. That means Ascent is fast and efficient, and perfect for those who want to get the most out of their time!