TALENT DEVELOPMENT
Businesswire | May 10, 2023
XPRIZE, the world’s leader in designing and operating incentive competitions to solve humanity’s grand challenges, hosts a virtual event today to celebrate the grand prize winner of the $1M Digital Learning Challenge, Adaptive Experimentation Accelerator from Raleigh, North Carolina, and showcase the technology developed by the challenge’s three finalist teams, including team Terracotta from Indiana University and team UpGrade by Carnegie Learning.
Launched in 2021, the Digital Learning Challenge incentivized teams to modernize, accelerate, and improve the technology and processes for evaluating and measuring effective learning and education. Using tools like AI methods, big data, and machine learning, teams sought to better understand the effectiveness of specific teaching techniques and practices, with the goal of providing substantial benefit for educators, parents, policymakers, researchers, and the tens of millions of Americans enrolled in formal education every year. The challenge is sponsored by the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), the independent and nonpartisan statistics, research, and evaluation arm of the U.S. Department of Education.
The three finalist teams participating in the Accelerate & Modernize: New Methods to Assess Student Learning Outcomes closing event include:
• Grand Prize Winner: Adaptive Experimentation Accelerator – Raleigh, North Carolina (Partnership between Intelligent Adaptive Interventions lab at University of Toronto, Open Learning Initiative at Carnegie Mellon, & North Carolina State University) o The Adaptive Experimentation Accelerator network aims to involve everyone in using experiments to enhance and personalize education. Our 'MOOClet' toolkit democratizes the contribution of ideas from many teachers, students, and scientists, then experimentally tests which ideas work for which students. Artificial Intelligence algorithms analyze data to adapt experiments in days vs months. This aims to test more ideas more quickly, and to use promising data to more rapidly get better approaches to students.
• Finalist: Terracotta – Bloomington, Indiana (Indiana University)
o Terracotta is an open source plugin to the Canvas learning management system, enabling researchers and teachers to conduct rigorous and responsible experimental studies on learning activities within a course site. Using Terracotta, the team was able to conduct over two-dozen mini-experiments across a variety of courses, ranging from 6th grade to college seniors, where each experiment used local materials and authentic teacher-created assessments.
• Finalist: UpGrade by Carnegie Learning – Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
o UpGrade is a free, open-source platform that enables iterative experimental design and deployment of new learning experiences that compare the efficacy of different tools and resources—such as lesson content, interactive elements, videos, algorithms and more—during active student learning. Each experiment measures what works best for whom, advancing the way we understand student learning and engagement and enabling the rapid design, deployment and analysis of large scale studies, including but not limited to complex K-12 school environments.
The final round or demonstration phase of the competition required teams to replicate their experiments at least five times with three or more distinct learner demographics. Based on their demonstration performance, Adaptive Experimentation Accelerator receives the grand prize designation and $500,000, while runners-up Terracotta and UpGrade will each receive $125,000 prizes. The three teams previously shared a $250,000 prize when they were announced as finalists in September 2022.
During the closing event, each of the three teams will present their technology and how it works, followed by a discussion of lessons learned from the Digital Learning Challenge. With the Challenge now concluded, the teams will seek to work with partners across the education and technology sectors to scale the impact and implementation of their solutions.“Through their participation and success in the Digital Learning Challenge, each of these teams has helped make advancements in technology to improve the ways that educators teach and that students learn,” said IES director Dr. Mark Schneider. “These teams have laid the groundwork for a new phase of experiments of frequency, scope and scale not possible through traditional methods of education research, which will ultimately lead to better experiences and outcomes for all learners.”
In the initial pilot phase of the competition, 10 teams had six months to demonstrate the capabilities of their rapid, reproducible experiments in an accredited education institutional setting and then 30 days to launch a replication study with at least one unique learner demographic. A judging panel of education and technology experts reviewed the pilot study technical submissions and selected three teams to move on to the final round and ultimately designated the winner.“We are deeply proud of the achievements of the Digital Learning Challenge finalist teams, whose creativity and commitment to improving education outcomes through technology and experimentation will resonate far beyond the conclusion of the competition,” said XPRIZE Digital Learning Challenge Technical Lead Dr. Monique Golden.“We look forward to working with these teams to forge new partnerships that will ensure they can continue developing and refining their technologies and scale the impact of their solutions.”
The Digital Learning Challenge is part of XPRIZE’s Learning and Society domain which is committed to achieving a future where everyone, regardless of income, race, age, identity, gender, or geography, has access to learning experiences to reflect their unique capabilities, disposition, and aspirations.
About XPRIZE
XPRIZE is a global future-positive movement delivering truly radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity. XPRIZE inspires and empowers a global community of problem-solvers to positively impact our world by crowdsourcing solutions through large-scale competitions, tackling the world’s grandest challenges in exploration, environment, and human equity.
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ENTREPRENEURS AND LEADERS
PRnewswire | April 24, 2023
As the digital transformation partner for the Education Practice Area of Public Consulting Group (PCG), Navisite today announced the successful migration and management of PCG's education solutions on Microsoft Azure.
PCG Education provides industry-leading educational technology solutions, including its EdPlan™ suite, that support thousands of schools and districts nationwide. As the company embraced a cloud-first strategy, PCG's Education practice needed an unbiased, experienced digital transformation partner to ensure that its core education products could be seamlessly migrated and securely managed in the public cloud.
"Navisite brought the public sector digital transformation expertise we needed in a partner to migrate, scale, and grow our Education practice on the cloud," said John Matthews, CIO of PCG's Education Practice Area. "Navisite continues to manage our cloud environment and operates as an extension of our team—ensuring we maintain the highest levels of security, performance, and availability for the school systems and states that rely on our products."
Navisite guided PCG Education's journey to Azure with cloud services and expertise that included a comprehensive migration of the team's IT estate along with recommendations for the go-forward cloud strategy. Navisite designed and built a highly secure Azure environment, executed the migration in partnership with PCG's team, and continues to provide ongoing managed cloud services, security services, and 24/7 support.
"As an industry leader, PCG's Education team was dealing with a large migration of business-critical products to the cloud," said Gina Murphy, Navisite's president and chief transformation officer. "They put their trust in Navisite and our proven experience guiding complex enterprise application migrations for mid-market companies of their size. We were thrilled to help guide and support their success and look forward to our continued partnership together well into the future."
About Public Consulting Group
Public Consulting Group LLC (PCG) is a leading public sector solutions implementation and operations improvement firm that partners with health, education, and human services agencies to improve lives. Founded in 1986 and headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, PCG and its affiliates employ over 3,000 professionals in offices worldwide—all committed to delivering solutions that change lives for the better. PCG offers clients a multidisciplinary approach to meet challenges, pursue opportunities, and serve constituents across the public sector.
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TALENT DEVELOPMENT
Globenewswire | May 29, 2023
Lincoln Educational Services Corporation, a leading provider of specialized technical training, including automotive technology, the skilled trades, healthcare, IT, culinary, and cosmetology has been included in the preliminary list of additions to the annual reconstitution of the broad-market Russell 3000® Index. The list including Lincoln was posted to the FTSE Russell website following the close of the U.S. markets on May 19, 2023. The annual reconstitution is effective as of the U.S. market open on June 26, 2023.
Lincoln Tech is one of the nation’s leading technical schools focusing on career skills training. The school has been providing workforce solutions for employers, ranging from small independently owned businesses to large international corporations, for over 75 years. “Lincoln continues to play a critical role in helping to address the tremendous skills gap that our country is facing,” says Scott Shaw, Lincoln Tech’s president and chief executive officer. Shaw adds, “Our graduates move into jobs that have been deemed essential and contribute to the economic growth of companies and communities. We’re very proud to be included in this list.”
Membership in the Russell 3000® Index means automatic inclusion in the large-cap Russell 1000® Index or small-cap Russell 2000® Index as well as in the appropriate growth and value style indexes. The Russell 3000® Index encompasses the 3,000 largest U.S.-traded stocks by objective, market-capitalization rankings, and style attributes. Membership in these indexes is updated annually and remains in place for one year.
The Russell indexes are widely used by investment managers and institutional investors for index funds and as benchmarks for active investment strategies. Approximately $12.1 trillion in assets are benchmarked against Russell's U.S. indexes. Russell indexes are part of FTSE Russell, a leading global index provider.
About Lincoln Educational Services Corporation
Lincoln Educational Services Corporation is a leading provider of diversified career-oriented post-secondary education. Lincoln offers recent high school graduates and working adults career-oriented programs in five principal areas of study: automotive technology, health sciences, skilled trades, business and information technology, and hospitality services. Lincoln has provided the workforce with skilled technicians since its inception in 1946.Lincoln currently operates 22 campuses in 14 states under four brands: Lincoln Technical Institute, Lincoln College of Technology and Euphoria Institute of Beauty Arts and Sciences. Lincoln also operates Lincoln Culinary Institutes in both Maryland and Connecticut.
About FTSE Russell
FTSE Russell is a global index leader that provides innovative benchmarking, analytics and data solutions for investors worldwide. FTSE Russell calculates thousands of indexes that measure and benchmark markets and asset classes in more than 70 countries, covering 98% of the investable market globally. FTSE Russell index expertise and products are used extensively by institutional and retail investors globally. Approximately $20.1 trillion is currently benchmarked to FTSE Russell indexes. For over 30 years, leading asset owners, asset managers, ETF providers and investment banks have chosen FTSE Russell indexes to benchmark their investment performance and create ETFs, structured products and index-based derivatives. A core set of universal principles guides FTSE Russell index design and management: a transparent rules-based methodology is informed by independent committees of leading market participants. FTSE Russell is focused on applying the highest industry standards in index design and governance and embraces the IOSCO Principles. FTSE Russell is also focused on index innovation and customer partnerships as it seeks to enhance the breadth, depth and reach of its offering. FTSE Russell is wholly owned by London Stock Exchange Group.
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