The Knewton Blog

With graduation season upon us, the topic of college debt is predictably ubiquitous. Last week, as I browsed Knewton’s Higher Education Today portal, which aggregates news stories related to higher education and organizes them by state, I was afforded a comprehensive look at just how student debt is affecting individual states as well as the nation as a whole. Here’s a quick look at what I found. The Problem Time Moneyland’s “Has graduation season become… Read more

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I’m a Knerd, but I’m also a nerd. I love learning about the history of pretty much everything from utensils to gamified learning. While researching the history of modularity in product design, I came across a videotaped lecture from Andrew Russell at the Franklin Center at Duke University. Russell, a professor of the history of science and technology, defines modularity as a “concept that describes a particular kind of system.” In his words, a modular… Read more

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Clayton Christensen’s Disrupting Class was the most recent pick for the Knewton book club. In this groundbreaking book, Christensen, a Harvard Business School professor and expert on innovation, describes a world in which continuous assessment unleashes a range of productive possibilities for education: “When students learn through student-centric online technology, testing doesn’t have to be postponed until the end of an instructional module and then administered in a batch mode. Rather, we can verify mastery… Read more

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To chronicle the chaotic new reality of our times, Robert Safian at FastCompany recently published an article which identified speed, chaos, and uncertainty as defining qualities of business in the twenty-first century. Some—Safian identifies them as “Generation Flux”—have survived and even thrived in the new economic climate by adopting a mindset that “embraces instability, that tolerates—and even enjoys—recalibrating careers, business models, and assumptions.” In the spirit of GenFlux, we decided to interview some of the… Read more

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Last Friday, we were fortunate enough to have Karen Cator, Director of the Office of Educational Technology at the U.S Department of Education, pay a visit to Knewton HQ. Prior to the lunch, Karen spoke to the whole company about the importance of data literacy and how we as a society can build momentum toward the mining of more meaningful educational data. One of the biggest takeaways was the importance of using school time efficiently… Read more

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The Edge, the brainchild of mega-agent and editor John Brockman, is this century’s salon–an online community of experts and innovators. In the words of the novelist Ian McEwan, Edge.org is “open-minded, free ranging, intellectually playful … an unadorned pleasure in curiosity, a collective expression of wonder at the living and inanimate world … an ongoing and thrilling colloquium.” In the past, contributors have included such luminaries as biologist Richard Dawkins, psychologist Steven Pinker, and philosopher… Read more

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One of the best things about working at Knewton is the emphasis on ongoing education. After all, a passion for knowledge and innovation informs everything we do–the way we design and build products, conduct research, and approach our work on a daily basis. Programming classes started as part of a hack day project awhile ago. “Knewton University” grew and grew over the last few months, and now we are proud to announce our spring curriculum… Read more

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I was thrilled to find out that Knewton made FastCompany’s list of the World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies, along with one of my favorite companies, Amazon. It’s hard to imagine my life without Amazon. I bought a Kindle for everyone close to me, I order hundreds of books every year. I’m always on the look-out for something new–the random, the obscure, the contrarian, the overlooked classic–and Amazon facilitates my search through its exhaustive lists and recommendations…. Read more

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To chronicle the chaotic new reality of our times, Robert Safian at FastCompany recently published an article which identified speed, chaos, and uncertainty as defining qualities of business in the twenty-first century.  Some—Safian identifies them as “Generation Flux”—have survived and even thrived in the new economic climate by adopting a mindset that “embraces instability, that tolerates—and even enjoys—recalibrating careers, business models, and assumptions.” We decided to interview some of the “fluxers” here at Knewton. Our… Read more

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Conventional career wisdom encourages delayed gratification, steady commitment to a single career or skill set, and a long and slow climb up a traditional corporate ladder. Traditionally, most cultural, educational, corporate, and political establishments do not support rapid change. Recently, however, the fluctuating pecking order–the swift ascent of giants like Facebook, Twitter, and Zynga and the dramatic downfall of other companies has suggested that times are changing. To chronicle this chaotic new reality, Robert Safian… Read more

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