Spin-outs educating for $20m investments

Smart Sparrow, an edtech spun out of New South Wales University, and Acrobatiq, an edtech spun out of Carnegie Mellon University, are among the seven finalists for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s Next Generation Courseware challenge worth $20m.

The challenge, which began in May 2014 when it invited proposals from the 100 most promising organisations, is aimed at developing next generation digital courses which use personalised instruction. The programme is set to help more than a million low-income and disadvantaged secondary education students secure a place on an undergraduate course. The foundation wants to reach that goal by 2018.

Successful companies will be awarded part of the $20m and will need to commit to a 36 months long effort to create, implement and deliver the technology. The respective technology’s results will be evaluated by third parties which will analyse students’ success.

The remaining finalists are Rice University OpenStax, the Open Learning Initiative at Stanford University, and startups Cerego, CogBooks and Lumen Learning.

Daniel Greenstein, director of post-secondary success at the foundation, said: “Students learn best when education is personalised to their needs and goals. There is a growing body of evidence that courseware, when integrated effectively by faculty in instruction, can personalise learning at unprecedented scale potentially enabling all students – not just those who are able to attend the most elite, expensive colleges – to get the best and most effective education at a reasonable price.”