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Pearson Bets on Adaptive Learning (Again) With $25M Acquisition of Smart Sparrow

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Smart Sparrow , which provides course-authoring tools for faculty and instructional designers to build adaptive courseware, has found a new home in a much bigger nest. Already, the Sydney, Australia-based company has pulled back on its social media presence. In 2014, the Gates Foundation awarded the company a $4.5

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Can a For-Profit, Venture-Backed Company Keep OER Free—and Be Financially Sustainable?

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New and traditional publishers are trying to offer alternatives such as open educational resources (OER), or freely downloadable and adaptable learning materials. But some providers of OER still ask for fees in return, and that has advocates concerned.

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Hitting Reset, Knewton Tries New Strategy: Competing With Textbook Publishers

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Knewton drew heaps of hype and investment by promising to provide artificial-intelligence technology to major textbook companies to make their content more adaptive. Now the company has pivoted, and it is poised to formally announce its own online courseware that will compete head-to-head with those publishing giants.

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Pearson Signals Major Shift From Print by Making All Textbook Updates ‘Digital First’

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The biggest education company in the world is moving away from a production model that has been one of the main drivers in the rising cost of textbooks. The average price for a Pearson digital textbook subscription for a semester is $40, according to the company. But the company is not cutting the cord with print. “We

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Knewton’s New Business Attracts New $25M in Funding. But Some Things Don’t Change.

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The company that set the bar for hyping adaptive-learning technology has had to adapt to new leadership and a new business model. The rest comes from company’s existing investors, including Accel, Atomico, Bessemer Venture Partners, FirstMark Capital, First Round Capital, Founders Fund and Sofina.

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Pearson, an Investor in Knewton, Is ‘Phasing Out’ Partnership on Adaptive Products

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Throughout the past decade, Knewton ’s adaptive learning technology has been backed by some of the biggest names in the both the publishing and venture capital community. Pearson will no longer use Knewton’s adaptive learning engine for some of its digital offerings. content providers.

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From Silos to Sharing: Why Are Open Educational Resources Still So Hard to Find?

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For over a decade, plenty of time and dollars have been poured into encouraging the use of open educational resources (OER). In 2007 the Hewlett Foundation’s funding helped create OER Commons. From my experience, the answers usually are: OER resources are in silos. Last year, the U.S. Many of the silos are poorly organized.

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