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

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. Last week, Pearson announced it paid $25 million to acquire Smart Sparrow’s technology, in a move that the publisher says will bolster the digital infrastructure that will soon support all its future higher-education offerings. The deal marks the latest in a series of acquisitions involving digital courseware, the industry parlance for online products that leverage data and technology to personalize the course instruction and feedback that each student receives. One such provider, Acrobatiq, was acquired in 2018. The following year, Knewton was bought in a deal that has become a poster child for education technology hype.