I recently learned of the startup Knewton. They’re an education company that focuses on developing computer-based courses out of textbooks in a manner that lets each student progress at their own pace and learn with methods that have proven successful for them in the past. This project seems like a good way to grab some low-hanging fruit in the education sphere and to start the process of computer-driven personalization of education, which strikes me as potentially quite powerful.
Some other details: my understanding is that they are creating efficient means to convert entire textbooks into a graph of each piece of knowledge along with knowledge of what pieces are prerequisite for other pieces. Then, a students can progress through the graph at varying speeds based on quiz scores and the system will suggest learning methods which have previously given good results for the students (eg: videos versus traditional text versus ‘real world’ examples).
Can this be effective? Are other companies doing similar projects? What are the other low-hanging fruit of education that computers can let us pick?
I recently learned of the startup Knewton. They’re an education company that focuses on developing computer-based courses out of textbooks in a manner that lets each student progress at their own pace and learn with methods that have proven successful for them in the past. This project seems like a good way to grab some low-hanging fruit in the education sphere and to start the process of computer-driven personalization of education, which strikes me as potentially quite powerful.
Some other details: my understanding is that they are creating efficient means to convert entire textbooks into a graph of each piece of knowledge along with knowledge of what pieces are prerequisite for other pieces. Then, a students can progress through the graph at varying speeds based on quiz scores and the system will suggest learning methods which have previously given good results for the students (eg: videos versus traditional text versus ‘real world’ examples).
Can this be effective? Are other companies doing similar projects? What are the other low-hanging fruit of education that computers can let us pick?