Fiveable Values
When students have agency over their learning, are heard by their instructors, and feel supported by a community, their chances of achieving their academic goals skyrocket. To achieve these things, we build all of our content and programming by first hearing from students about what they need, and then including them in the process of creating and iterating. This manifests in several different, discrete ways.
We literally listen to what students say and create opportunities for them to be heard by the Fiveable team and beyond. Whether it be in Slack, in a focus group, during a live event, or as a content creator, students have the opportunity to shape the way we do everything we do at Fiveable.
To maintain this, we create intentional feedback loops and iterate what we do based on the feedback gathered.
We treat students with respect and hold them to a high standard, because we believe that they are capable and worthy. Students are encouraged to show up as their authentic selves, physically and emotionally. Fiveable is also committed to giving students responsibility and ownership over the product in a variety of different ways: We hire students to work with us, we trust them to be content and brand leaders, and we encourage and promote them on our platforms.
Giving students ownership over their experience means that we, as adults and educators, have to give up some of that ownership ourselves. This can feel hard, but we're committed to it, because when we de-center adults in academic spaces and instead center students, the impact on learning potential is immeasurable.
There's no room for ego when pursuing this goal. That's not to say that we don't value institutional or professional knowledge. However, student perspectives and needs are constantly changing, and so institutional and pedagogical beliefs that don't change with students are not helpful.
Growth mindsets are essential to innovative thinking. Everyone in Fiveable—from the executive team to our students—embraces the idea that we don't know everything there is to know, and so there's always more to learn. Students can be our greatest teachers, but as adults, we have to be open to hearing them. Sometimes this means learning new tools, or new processes, or new ways of doing things. We actively search for what's next, what's better, and embrace opportunities to throw out the old and usher in the new.
We are solution-oriented and believe that problems are solvable, even when they're tricky or complicated. This often means thinking outside the box, and that's a space that we're comfortable in.
Our teachers are tech-savvy, flexible, creative, and open to learning new things, no matter how much experience they might always have. We're not here to just cover content. We're here to push the boundaries of our disciplines.