Acrobatiq Awarded Finalist Position in $20 Million Digital Courseware Challenge
Pittsburgh, PA (PRWEB) September 30, 2014 -- Announced today, Acrobatiq is recognized as a finalist in a $20 million challenge by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to develop next generation digital courseware, designed to personalize instruction and help underperforming and disadvantaged students successfully complete required general education undergraduate courses.
Acrobatiq is scaling the pioneering research in online learning from Carnegie Mellon University’s Open Learning Initiative (OLI) through its portfolio of outcomes-driven adaptive courseware. Acrobatiq’s approach to optimizing learning is based on leading-edge research in cognitive science, human-computer interaction, and statistical analysis from Carnegie Mellon and other prominent research organizations.
Eric Frank, Acrobatiq CEO, said, “We’re honored for this recognition and to partner in the quest to improve student success through personalized learning. Improving outcomes depends on designing courseware based on principles derived from learning science such as students only learn by doing. As they’re doing, we collect and model data to adapt instruction, to gauge student progress and to make good decisions about where to focus practice, and to give faculty visibility into who is learning, who’s not, and where help is needed.”
Dr. Lawrence Rudiger, Ph.D., Department of Psychology, University of Vermont explained, “What sets Acrobatiq apart is the Learning Dashboard. The Dashboard shows meaningful summaries of students’ work. I can use the information to make wise decisions about class time, and use it to amplify and clarify points where students tended to struggle. It’s not always what I would predict. But it’s far more gratifying to know what they did not understand before I administer an exam.”
Funding from the Next Generation Courseware Challenge will enable Acrobatiq to further expand its portfolio of courseware to help students achieve greater success in core, high-enrollment, gateway courses, as well to give faculty resources for use in improving student outcomes.
Acrobatiq has formed a broad and diverse partnership framework to implement and evaluate Acrobatiq courseware across a spectrum of higher education institutions and educational delivery models. Partners include Western Governors University, Arizona State University, The University System of Georgia, Rio Salado College, National Louis University, and StraighterLine. These partners are committed to quality, access and excellence, and seek flexible courseware that ensures pedagogical and content integrity, provides for localization and customization in delivery, and supports the personalization of the learning experience.
Eric Frank commented, “Together, with our partners we believe we can improve student-learning outcomes and enable more students to succeed.”
Acrobatiq partners comment:
Philip Regier, Executive Vice Provost & Dean, Arizona State University:
“We are excited about the opportunity to work with Acrobatiq because of their historic roots in the Open Learning Initiative and their future vision of developing a flexible and scalable adaptive learning system to facilitate collaboration among faculty members who create and use the courses.”
Dr. David Leasure, Western Governors University Provost: "WGU students and faculty demand high quality courseware that is personalized to students’ learning needs. Acrobatiq’s design and development methods and its commitment to use course performance data to continuously enhance each course for better student outcomes make it a great partner for WGU.”
Jennifer Freed, Ph.D., Vice President of Academic Affairs, Rio Salado College: “Rio Salado College has a history of using innovative approaches to learning and delivering these approaches to scale. We believe that working with Arizona State University and Acrobatiq provides us with an opportunity to help our institutions, as well as others interested in this breakthrough model of delivery, develop and implement adaptive courses across several disciplines.”
Burck Smith, CEO, StraighterLine: “By combining best-in-breed courseware, psychometrically validated assessments, guaranteed transfer credits and StraighterLine's ultra-affordable prices and negotiated scholarships, StraighterLine saves students and taxpayers millions of dollars at its growing network of partner colleges. In partnership with Acrobatiq, StraighterLine will speed adoption of new learning and pricing models for college students.”
Sally Beatty, Ph.D., Director of Innovation, National-Louis University: “As a non-profit, private institution that serves a large non-traditional learner population, we feel that the Acrobatiq platform and curriculum can have a positive impact on academic achievement and learning outcomes across a diverse student body. Acrobatiq can help us provide a high quality learning experience, in blended, online or competency-based modality, to a wider audience than we currently serve. Acrobatiq¹s platform provides us with the data that frames our holistic support services and enables us to better support individual student learning needs from enrollment to graduation.
About Acrobatiq
Acrobatiq, a Carnegie Mellon company, is scaling the pioneering research in online learning from Carnegie Mellon University’s Open Learning Initiative (OLI) through its portfolio of outcomes-driven adaptive courseware. Acrobatiq optimizes learning with its evidence-based approach to course design that collects and models data to adapt instruction, that gauges student progress to make good decisions about where to focus practice, and gives faculty visibility into who is learning, who’s not, and where help is needed, all with the goal of enabling more students to succeed.
Learn more at Acrobatiq.com.
Lisa Wolfe, L. Wolfe Communications, +1 773-278-2800, [email protected]
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