Explanation of Monarch Online Homeschool Curriculum

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Abeka All Access — A local student, Starr, took this photo.

Do Students Today Have a Change in Attention Spans?

It has been well documented that because students today are used to seeing fast "clips" of information from videos and the internet, their brains have been "re-wired" from the brains of fifty plus years ago.

This is because years ago, people viewed experiences in real time. And, they processed them in real time. Today, children have images thrown at them in rapid succession, with the need to process them at lightening speed. This has had an effect on both children's attention spans, and their understanding of the world around them.

This concept is very important for homeschooling parents to understand because it ultimately affects how a student is able to learn.

Students with this "brain re-wiring" have very short attention spans and a strong need to have visual stimulation.

Back years ago, students were used to sitting in class, listening to a teacher for long periods of time, or reading long passages with no graphics and being able to understand and gather the information from those passages.

However, many students today simply do not have the ability to do the same. Shorter attention spans means that their brains wander after only a short period, making it very hard to concentrate or remember the material.

It can be frustrating for parents, who grew up with an "old school" education, to understand why their students simply cannot do the same. It just may be that it is not a matter of a lack of self-discipline, but rather, the physical inability to be able to do it.

More information can be found in the following articles: "Shorter Attention Span: the Impact of Technology on Our Brains" from Web Wise Wording, "Why is Our Generation's Attention Span So Short?" from Penn State, and "Our Attention Spans are Getting Shorter, and It's a Big Problem" from Huffington Post.

Some homeschooling curriculums have picked up on the problem better than others, and have created their learning environments based upon scientific calculations of what it takes to hold a child's attention to the material.

Parents who see issues with attention span in their children may find better success with these types of programs, which generally contain a variety of learning experiences, such as video, short reading passages, and bold graphics.

Explanation of Monarch Online Curriculum

Monarch is an online homeschool curriculum produced by Alpha and Omega Publishers. Alpha and Omega has been around as a homeschool book pack curriculum ("Switched On Schoolhouse") for a very long time. Monarch is their entry into the digital world by providing all online content for parents that are looking for that type of homeschool for their students.

First, let's take a moment to look at the difference in online curriculums. Some are intended to suppliment parental teaching. That means that the parent is still responsible for teaching the material, just like he/she would be with a book pack, but they can use an online tool to add to that teaching. Instead of a textbook, for instance, the student could read passages on the computer. Others, are meant to replace a large portion of the actual teaching by providing a video of a teacher explaining the material to the student the way a teacher would in a class. Abeka and BJU Press are of the latter type providing a teacher, whereas Monarch is a supplimental curriculum. Basically, the Monarch material replaces a student textbook, but the homeschooling parent is expected to still teach the material. This is a very important factor, because Monarch was not intended to be a "stand alone" program.

To further illustrate this difference; With Abeka a parent can start a subject by sitting the student down in front of the computer with his/her textbook and allowing the student to listen to the teacher. The teacher will instruct the student to read passages in the textbook and complete assignments in it. Parents will present students with handouts when the teacher on the video indicates that it is time for one. Whereas with Monarch, a parent would allow the student to read the material in Monarch and, then, teach the material to the child. Simply sitting a child down in front of Monarch and expecting him/her to learn the material by his/herself would be like giving a student a textbook and expecting him/her to learn everything simply by reading it. The program does have an option where the computer will read the information to the student, but it is simply "reading" the passage, not teaching it.

Monarch does not come with parent teaching manuals. Instead, parents will have to read the material in Monarch ahead of the class and come up with their own lesson plans, which makes it substantially more difficult than some of the bookpacks that come with a teacher's manual that allows the teacher to simply "read" the lesson to the students. (Basically, they write everything down so the parent, who is not a professional teacher, can just read it out loud instead of coming up with their own plan to teach it. Monarch doesn't do that.)

As long as Monarch's purpose is clearly understood, the program itself can be a good asset to a homeschooling program.

Monarch allows homeschooling families access to a huge number of classes at a very low price. Families pay one fee for up to three students that allows them to access all the main subjects for every grade. Electives are extra.

The cost for Monarch for a year for three students is $629.96. If there is only one student in the family, the cost would be $359.96 a year.

Monarch has a large number of electives, and although the cost of them is separate, it is very reasonable, ranging from $33 to $90, depending on the subject. They have elective subjects that are not easily found elsewhere, including courses in various career choices, like Allied Health or Construction. This makes Monarch a good suppliment to any other homeschool curriculum, particularly for electives.

Monarch gives parents a lot of control. With the Monarch platform, parents have a dashboard, and students have their own dashboard. Therefore, parents can go in separate from the student account and see their student's work, set assignments for each student, and even send messages to each student through the system. Monarch sends parents an email to their own private email to alert the parent if a student has not completed an assignment.

Quizzes and tests are all online, so Monarch does also calculate grades, and parents can see where a student's grade stands at all times. The parent will need to grade some of the questions on tests and quizzes, though, which it allows the parent to do through their dashboard. Parents have full control over grades and can change them.

The concept of Monarch's dashboard is great, but it isn't very user friendly. It is somewhat difficult to learn, so parents should go in and familarize themselves with how it works before school starts.

Parents also need to be aware that Monarch basically replaces a textbook, and as such, daily lessons are comprised of long reading passages. We have heard there are some basic videos as well. We did not encounter any in the classes we observed, so we are unable to comment on those. But we would love to hear from other families who have used Monarch.

In today's world students are used to bold colors and heavy visual graphics in the images they see on online. Whereas, back in the day, when most of us homeschooling parents were in school, our books had simple sketches, and we were perfectly happy. Monarch has the older type of design, so its graphics would be considered very crude by today's standards. Parents should be aware that if they have students that are used to a lot of heavy visual imagery, Monarch will seem very bland, and possibly "outdated" visually to them.

Our staff tested out Monarch's 10th grade Chemistry. It consisted of large reading passages with very crude graphics to break it up. The material was quite difficult to understand, and I have to admit that my mind was wandering far from the lessons after the first few pages. To be fair, Monarch claims to use 50,000 interactive elements including video clips and games in their lessons. We didn't encounter any, and perhaps our review would have been a little different if we had. In reading about Monarch initially we were pretty excited about what we heard from them and were looking forward to the interactivity. What we saw was not nearly as interactive as expected.

When observing students in the program, we found the same problem, with one of them citing it as "torture on a screen". It should be noted, however, that the students we were following had all previously used other curriculums, so they were accustomed to either a more contemporary design or listening to a teacher. One of the students was ADHD, and her mother found that Monarch simply did not work for her needs because the student was unable to focus long enough to learn the material.

Now with that said, students that are used to more traditional programs, in which they have long reading passages where they need to gleen the information visually from reading, may do very well with Monarch. Also, students that begin with Monarch and become accustomed to that type of learning may also do well with it.

The other thing that should be taken into consideration is that if the parent is providing a stimulating learning experience in addition to Monarch, it could work as a good suppliment.

Alpha and Omega does offer an academy that uses Monarch as its teaching material. We do not have any first-hand knowledge with Alpha and Omega Academy, so we do not know if any of the problems associated with Monarch are also issues with the academy, or if they are using it in a way that overcomes those barriers.

You can reach Monarch's website at the very strange URL of https://www.aop.com/curriculum/monarch.

Our experience with Monarch was limited, and we welcome any parent reviews of the program, positive or negative.

Return to DVD/Online Curriculums

Watch the Monarch promo video above.

This image depicts the Parent Portal for Monarch.

Monarch Advertisement for Free Trial Offer

Monarch's Homeschooling Blog is a good resource for homeschooling parents whether or not they use Monarch.

Above is a review of Monarch from "Pros and Cons of Homeschooling".

Monarch offers a 30 day free trial. Watch the video above for more information. We recommend that you do the free trial prior to the start of school so that you can switch to something else if it isn't what you need.

For an overview of how one parent uses Monarch, watch this video.

The above video is from a homeschooling mom with a YouTube Channel called "Humerous Homesmaking". This video has nothing to do with Monarch. In fact, she is stating that they found academies to work best for their family. However, she gives some excellent advice about homeschool that is a valuable resource. This is a good watch.