Back to School – Studying was never this easy!

Higher marks with a reduced amount of study time ? - Can Cram101.com make the grade?

C.R.A.M. or Cram101 stands for “Creative Rapid Academic Mastery” and as the name implies, the goal is to help students in mastering their subject matter in less time and with much improved results. And the only result that matters is higher grades than conventional study methods. It is a claim that is being demonstrated by this Ventura, California based Artificial Intelligence Company. They have indeed invented a vehicle for improved learning; but like any vehicle, the degree of success depends on the driver. And since this represents a shift in the way students study, there is often resistance to break established study patterns and to try something different.

Cram101 – Better Grades in reduced time - How it works

Cram101.com is not a substitute for studying or purchasing the text book. You cannot simply buy the chapter outlines and self teaching practice tests and skip the rest; it is all about studying smarter, not harder and by design cram 101 has set out to alter study patterns and ultimately the only real result that counts – higher test scores. Students often confuse the cram notes with study guides that come with the text or are purchased separately. The company is quick to point out that study guides are intended to be diagnostic tools that show you what you do not know while Cram 101 is designed to actually teach you the material.

Says Dr. Scott Parfitt, founder and CEO; “A text book author creates an outline with key concepts and then elaborates on it until it becomes a text book. The student then buys the text book and uses a highlighter to parse it back into its original outline. Cram 101 does this function for the student providing the core information along with providing more information where it is warranted. We then take it to the next step by providing the tools for self testing and learning the material as efficiently as possible.”

The power of the system is that Cram101 allows the student to cover more relevant study ground rapidly and to self-test. Cram101 claims “you will never highlight a book again.” Cram101 combines the muscle of the Internet, Artificial intelligence, Social Networking as well as other technologies in a novel way that has never been done before in the study world. For instance, a student can now take a practice test on their hand held device just prior to going in for the test.

The science behind Cram101 is complex and they are very guarded over their intellectual property; the system starts with Cram101’s proprietary Artificial Intelligent system that can take a text book and 15 minutes later deliver notes and practice tests. The artificial intelligence engine was designed to emulate the study process of an “A” student and to read any textbook and discover the “testable” information. The textbook outlines are then made available at 20,000 retailers internationally as well as online at book sellers such as Amazon.com and Barnes&Noble.

Facebook; Cram101 College Study Network

Students can come into Cram101 through Facebook.com. Through Facebook students receive free outlines, highlights and optional practice tests for thousands of college text books. Using FaceBook’s social network, students can share notes with others and network with students anywhere who are taking the same course. Cram101’s own study group capability lets people share notes for given textbooks with anyone in the world who might be using or have used the same book through collaborative learning.

The Cost

Students are invited to test drive Chapter 1 of any text book free of charge and to try before they buy. Says Parfitt “We know it works and we know people who use Cram101 get the grades they want in the most efficient way ever imagined” You can sign up for cram101.com on the website $9.95 per month. The site provides online reviews of the standard text books letting the student know what the author thinks is important and what they are likely to be tested on. They also get all the tests. If you purchase the study guide, the subscription is $4.95 per month. Go in through Facebook everything is free, except for the test that cost $ 4.95. There are no contracts and membership can be cancelled at any time.

Short History of Cram101 – Necessity is the Mother of Invention (Plato)

Cram101is the classic “Necessity is the Mother of Invention” story but it took decades for the technology to exist in order to build the system that exists today. Cram101 is the brainchild of Dr. Scott Parfitt. Back in 1977, when the majority of the students reading this article were not even born, Scott was married with 2 small children. Although he had in a promising career as a manager for a retail chain, he was bored and decided to take a summer college course on his favorite topic since he was 12 – philosophy. He was hooked on higher education. However, with family obligations, time was tight and he found himself in the classic dilemma; He could not go to school full time; so not enough college education would leave him unsatisfied and too much time would cause him to get discouraged and quit.

Scott found himself working at a factory and with his studies he had very few hours, of allotted time for sleep. He knew that burning the candle at both ends would result in weak performance which would equate into a greater amount of time needed to succeed. This reality would become crucial down the road and it would become a catalyst that would cause Scott to dedicate time on learning theory.
Fortunately, Scott’s job, running numerical controlled lathes with long cycle times allowed him time to read at the same time. By reading the texts cover to cover and writing the “highlights” of each book into a notebook he knew the mechanical process of writing the notes as well as reading would ingrain the information ”even if I were relatively unconscious at examination”. Scott would purchase the texts in advance of the course and instead of feeling panics in class as it would be the third pass of the material for him, he felt bored. Scott then branched out to exploring the reference texts in each of the chapters – outlining the material in his notebooks. He found the mechanical process so efficient and effective that he finished his undergraduate degrees (psychology, philosophy, mathematics, an a minor in physics and physiology) in three years and was also bale to teach computer programming because he did not need the study time. He graduated with a 4.0 and won the distinguished honors award in both psychology and philosophy. Then it was off to Notre Dame with a full ride scholarship where he finished a Masters degree and Doctorate in three years with a 4.0 average, the entire time working in the factory.

Says Parfitt “Cram101 is a as much the realization of a personal system designed to ensure my success as well as years of honing the system theoretically and in experimental lab settings. It is today far superior to the grease stained notebook pages of my factory days. As a true psychologist, I believe that given the right tools and environment all people can achieve similar results, it is not about talent or predisposition, its about training, tools, environment, and motivation. When I visited campuses in 2000 and saw that students were still studying with book and highlighter in hand, I decided to invest my own money (actually once again my wife’s influence) and build a prototype, which inevitably became Cram101.”

The Future for Cram101

The company’s goal is to tap into the more than 300 million college students worldwide and to create a global social college study network. And while there are great opportunities, there is also some resistance. According to Parfitt “ the biggest resistance is two things; it sounds too good to be true, and second, using the system to its fullest sounds like too much work. I would say rather than its too good to be true, it is about time. Second, what sounds like a lot of work, namely using the suggested study methodology outlined on Cram, is actually less “effort” and therefore less “work”. The Cram learning process is largely mechanical. You learn with minimal effort.”
Cram 101 has a growing population of supporters and proponents. One of the common quotes about the system is that students wished they would have known about Cram101 earlier. And because it represents a shift in the way students study, they often confuse it with Cliffs Notes and want to believe it is a replacement for the textbook instead of being used as a complement.

Cram continues to invest in R&D at the machine level and at the learning systems level. They are currently exploring multimedia extentions of Cram101 that promise to be even “more exiting and challenging” according to Parfitt. As the driver of Cram 101, Parfitt adds “As an aside, as a person I am driven by personal growth. When I used to work as a turn-around artist for the fortune 500 to help fledgling companies grow, my motto was always “grow or shrink,” there is nothing in between. I hold that as a motto for my own life as well. Today, I have added “do more with less” as a constant goal. That is the promise of technology. “