The Knewton Blog

We do a lot of research as we refine our adaptive learning engine. Our most recent research concerned how two fancy-sounding educational concepts — content scaffolding and metacognitive scaffolding — can be used to help improve learning and increase engagement among students. Here’s what these two types of scaffolding are all about: Content scaffolding consists of reminding students of critical concepts, presenting a multi-step problem as a series of smaller problems, and otherwise breaking down… Read more

Posted in Adaptive Learning, EdTech, Education & Technology, Featured, Knewton | 4 comments

I had the pleasure recently of spending a little time with Simon Lebus, the Chief Executive of Cambridge Assessment (CA). The last time I checked, CA was Europe’s largest assessment agency. During part of that conversation, Simon pointed me to a research report CA produced in 2008 on critical thinking. The research methodology combined expert judgment with a review of relevant literature in order to produce consensus about what critical thinking is (and is not)… Read more

Posted in Adaptive Learning, EdTech, Education, Education & Technology, Featured, Knewton | No comments

For some time now, many educators have contended that our current school-year-based system, in which students are expected to accomplish a certain set of objectives in a certain arbitrary unit of time, is fundamentally broken. One of the current, and controversial, approaches that seeks to fix it is “competency-based learning.” In a recent thought-paper published by iNACOL, three components of such systems are listed: Students advance upon mastery ƒƒ Explicit and measurable learning objectives are established that empower… Read more

Posted in Adaptive Learning, EdTech, Education, Education & Technology, Knewton | No comments

David Kuntz is the Vice President of Research at Knewton If you’ve spent any time in the field of educational technology, you may have heard the term “adaptive learning,” or one of its many aliases: adaptive instruction, adaptive hypermedia, computer-based learning, intelligent tutoring systems, computer-based pedagogical agents… If you’re like most people, however, the precise definition of the term(s) probably still eludes you. So the question remains: What is adaptive learning? At the most basic… Read more

Posted in Adaptive Learning, EdTech, Education & Technology, Knewton, Technology | 3 comments