Nearly every digital education product today boasts some form of customization. When Knewton was founded in 2008, the idea of personalized learning had been around for a while, but the idea of computer adaptive learning was so new in the marketplace that Knewton’s trademark attorneys couldn’t find a single instance of it in corporate literature (we did eventually find it in academic literature). Now “adaptive” is an overused buzzword. Products are marketed as “personalized,” “differentiated,”… Read more

Every instructor has her own preferences for creating assignments. Some like to assign short, nightly homework; others prefer longer, weekly assignments. Some use homework to reinforce previous topics, while others use it to introduce new concepts. Knewton-powered learning products offer instructors even more opportunities to customize homework assignments by tailoring them to each student’s individual needs. We’re always eager to learn more about how instructors are using Knewton-powered products in their classrooms. In this study,… Read more

It’s 3:13am on a Thursday morning. Everyone else in the dorm is asleep, but here you are, frantically typing at your computer. Your chemistry problem set is due in less than four hours. It was assigned last Wednesday, but you kept putting it off. You had plans with your friends over the weekend. You had team practice on Monday night. You had to work on Tuesday afternoon, and your favorite television show was on last… Read more

The transition of education products from print to digital is complex. There’s much to consider in creating, developing, and marketing innovative education products that are both technically and pedagogically sound. It’s for this reason that we’re so excited about our partnership with digital solutions company Young Digital Planet (YDP), a Sanoma Learning Company. YDP helps education companies of all sizes build effective digital learning applications. Building a digital learning product isn’t easy: companies often have… Read more

In my time as a teacher, differentiation was the single greatest predictor of classroom outcomes. Simply put, when I made sure that each of my students had a set of diverse instructional options to chose from when learning a new topic, they were more successful. Students don’t all learn in the same way. If you haven’t spent time in a high school classroom since, well, high school, just think of trying to explain an unfamiliar… Read more

This post was co-written by Susan D’Auria and Ashley Mucha.  Imagine a classroom filled with 20 or more young faces. Multiply that by 5. That’s how many students an average teacher sees each day. And he’s expected to teach, know, and mentor each one of them. Oh yeah, and plan lessons, grade, engage in professional development, talk to parents, attend meetings — not to mention having a life outside of school. Sounds … well, impossible…. Read more

Meeting the needs of every student is one of the biggest difficulties teachers face today. Some students are struggling to catch up; others are bored with the material at hand. (And this doesn’t take behavior issues or other challenges into account.) With Knewton, teachers can better serve the needs of students at both ends of the spectrum, and everywhere in between. Waggle, Powered by Knewton As an example, let’s look at Triumph Learning’s Waggle, an… Read more