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Dror Ben-Naim – Nov 14, 2018To realize the true potential of digital learning, we must first change the software architecture at the heart of the education ecosystem. In technology, the only thing constant is change. While technology itself is changing rapidly — just consider the computing power of the average smartphone compared to a desktop 20 years ago — so, too, are user expectations. But...
Continue ReadingHow to turnaround Talent Development from an Expense into an Investment Let’s face it, the word “transformation” is simply “change” rebranded, and we use...
Amanda Newlin The era of digital is significantly influencing all aspects of learning and teaching – who the learner is, why they learn and how they...
Rhea Jaju It’s never been a more exciting time to be working in educational technology, as we are seeing the advent of a new era of...
Botong Cheng As a university student in the late 2000s/2010s, and later as a teacher, I’ve had frustrating experiences on both sides of the screen when...
Matthew Bennett There is a reason why teachers want to teach. There’s something special about helping someone feel empowered; assisting them to move from not understanding...
Martin Van de Weyer Our recently published ebook on The Next Wave in Digital Learning explores the past and current trends in online learning. It discusses the two...
Rhea Jaju Have you ever longed for a learning tool to be your Valentine? Answer our 5 question quiz and we’ll tell you which Smart Sparrow...
Chelsea Goldsmith [Republished with permission from the Inspark Teaching Network] Ivy Tech Community College and Mohave Community College, two Inspark Network members received prestigious $10,000 Faculty-Led...
Ashley Coolman You wake up on Wednesday, October 30th. It’s a crisp and chilly morning; a great day to go shopping for technology solutions — both...
Jazmin Mignaquy At Smart Sparrow, we are committed to making the best learning experiences for as many students as possible. We strive to create content that...
Grace Dover One of the great pleasures of my role at Smart Sparrow is all of the incredibly fascinating people that I get to speak to...
Amanda Newlin This week, our team is attending EDUCAUSE 2018 in Denver, CO and we’re itching to let you in on our secret. If you’re attending,...
Jazmin Mignaquy Transferring content from an in-person class to an online platform is not a one-to-one shift. Teaching online is a different experience with different advantages...
Grace Dover The Learning Nerds Podcast is Smart Sparrow’s new edtech learncast. Our goal is to create interesting, educational episodes for listeners who seek to push...
Grace Dover This October and November, Professors Gangadhara Prusty and Robin Ford from UNSW Sydney are returning to offer two popular engineering mechanics courses through the...
Ashley Coolman Every March, just days before concert-goers and TED Talk enthusiasts flood the streets of Austin, Texas for South by Southwest (SXSW), a different cohort...
Chelsea Goldsmith Are you ready to master the digital classroom? Learning technology gives instructors the power to help students not only push through and understand difficult...
Ashley Coolman This summer’s Learning Innovation Summit asked a big question: how can we leverage effective learning innovations to improve student outcomes in the sciences? The...
Chelsea Goldsmith SAN FRANCISCO, July 31, 2018 – New York University has announced Smart Sparrow as the winner of its first-ever Algorithm for Change competition, designed...
Ashley Coolman Joliet Junior College is a community college in Illinois that serves more than 35,000 diverse students. Approximately 65-70% of incoming students are freshmen, many...
Ashley Coolman In his keynote address at last month’s Learning Innovation Summit, Chan Zuckerberg Institute VP of Learning Science, Dr. Bror Saxberg, treated attendees to the...
Chelsea Goldsmith Episode two of the The Learning Nerds Podcast is online! This time, we take you to the Learning Innovation Summit 2018 hosted on June...
Ashley Coolman Foundations of Science, a collaborative project between the Smart Sparrow Learning Design Studio, ACTNext by ACT, Inc., and Arizona State University, has been announced...
Ashley Coolman On June 15, 2018, over 200 educators came together in Mountain View, California to discuss the future of education, and how technology can continue...
Chelsea Goldsmith Earlier this week I attended the UPCEA SOLA+R conference, which brings higher education faculty and staff together to explore what they call “the online...
Ashley Coolman Have you found yourself in one of these common scenarios, now trying to navigate unfamiliar territory? Your university or college just updated their charter...
Ashley Coolman Arizona State University, NASA, ACT, Smart Sparrow will host the 2018 Learning Innovation Summit In Silicon Valley Mountain View, CA — The Center for...
Chelsea Goldsmith If you’re joining us for the Learning Innovation Summit 2018 why not stay the weekend in San Francisco or the surrounding Bay Area? Here...
Ashley Coolman PhET Interactive Simulations at University of Colorado Boulder, today, announced a collaboration with the adaptive learning company Smart Sparrow. The partnership will enable science...
Chelsea Goldsmith Our clients, and their students’ needs, continually push us to evolve the learning experiences we design and the platform features we provide to enable...
Sami Derradji Smart Sparrow is proud to announce that two exciting projects we’ve had the pleasure to work on are advancing the final rounds of judging...
Chelsea Goldsmith Last year at the Learning Innovation Summit 2017, co-hosted by Deakin University and Smart Sparrow with support from UNSW Sydney, EduGrowth, and the BEST...
Ashley Coolman Part of maintaining a design thinking mindset means being open to finding inspiration in unusual places. Though learning designers focus on education in our...
Don Bratton When was the last time your students were able to explore a topic freely and construct their own meaning of the material? The internet...
Grace Dover Instructors and learning designers in higher education are stretched thin. In our recent survey, published in the Digital Learning Innovation 2017 Report, 100% of...
Chelsea Goldsmith In teaching and learning, not all questions are created equal. Some questions have one objectively correct response, while others are subjective with an infinite...
David Copeman ACT, the nonprofit developer of the ACT® test and other assessments taken by millions of individuals annually worldwide, has made a $7.5 million strategic...
Ashley Coolman Recently published is the Digital Learning Innovation 2017 Report, discussing the current state of learning innovation in higher education. Over 200 educators shared insights...
Ashley Coolman Thinking about learning innovation is often an exercise in unanswerable questions. First and foremost, what’s the best way to plan for and measure innovation?...
Ashley Coolman A few weeks ago, I attended ETCPS 2017, the Educational Technology and Computational Psychometrics Symposium hosted by ACTNEXT by ACT in Iowa City. It...
Dror Ben-Naim Improving student results in introductory science courses is a global priority, as our economy continues leaning on a shortage of STEM-related college graduates. In...
Ashley Coolman More instructors are voicing a desire to provide mobile learning experiences for their students. Which we understand, since digital natives already spend 20% of...
Ashley Coolman The use of real-time analytics continues to gain momentum in higher education, and with good reason — getting immediate insight into whether students are...
Ashley Coolman This year, Deakin University and Smart Sparrow have come together to host the Learning Innovation Summit 2017 (#LIS17): Fresh Solutions to Old Problems. The...
Ashley Coolman We’ve been having a lot of conversations at Smart Sparrow about the difference between “education innovation” and “learning innovation”. While the two ideas are...
Emily Watson Smart Sparrow today announced $4 million in new funding to support the expansion of their popular instructional design and courseware platform. This funding round...
Ashley Coolman More technology is entering the workplace, including within learning and development programs. Yet the 2017 Workplace Learning Report showed that the “number one method for...
Ashley Coolman How can you use online learning to meet individual needs? Motivate persistence and achievement? Inspire students? In this Q&A session with one of Smart...
Alison Murray In Todd Sampson’s series, Redesign My Brain, he is taught by an experienced “memoriser” how to internalise and recall the order of a pack...
Martin Van de Weyer Every learning designer has their own set of strategies they use when crafting learning experiences. As an enthusiastic Learning Designer, I’m constantly absorbing industry...
Sami Derradji To work on achieving student retention rate goals, especially for nontraditional students, many universities and colleges are revisiting their orientation programs and courses. Education...
Ashley Coolman An instructional designer recently wrote a blog post questioning what anyone means when they talk about “engaging” learning experiences. In it, he wonders about...
Ashley Coolman Our students have changed radically. Today’s students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach. (Prensky 2001 p1) For that,...
Ashley Coolman The hallmark of a great learning experience is that it’s both personal and engaging. And designing engaging learning experiences means finding ways to enable...
Dror Ben-Naim As technology evolves, learning designers have new tools to think about new, different ways to engage learners online. Today, we added six advanced input...
David Copeman Online learning initiatives often fail to engage and teach learners because they are passive in nature — reading PDFs, flipping through slides, listening to...
Ashley Coolman A Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) is a unique opportunity for educators. They can make information more accessible and scale their teaching to hundreds...
Ashley Coolman Every term, California State University, East Bay (CSUEB) intakes a large class of transfer students from community colleges and other universities. Recognizing how difficult...
Ashley Coolman In today’s screen-centered world, learning has become a more complex collaboration between the instructor, the learner, and the medium. As learning resources, tools, and...
Amanda Newlin When you read about active learning, articles typically begin their discourse with a definition of the term — that tells me that even though...
Ashley Coolman Choose one of the following: Have you made a choice? Good. Now to the results. If you chose green, tough luck—you chose incorrectly. Well...
Martin Van de Weyer “Failure is the most powerful teacher.” I’ve heard people say this on several occasions, but failure alone is a terrible teacher—it’s a dead end...
Alison Murray Recently we’ve been sharing a lot of interesting learning experiences in our chat room. Videos for learning new languages, a game that explains how...
Dominic Sebastian In my first year studying Industrial Design at University, we were given a cautionary tale about the cost of not understanding who we were...
Dominic Sebastian February was quite a social month for Smart Sparrow, as our CEO Dror Ben-Naim was invited to host two Twitter chats, held by EdSurge...
Jazmin Mignaquy In engineering universities around the world, there has traditionally been a high student failure rate in foundational courses such as Engineering Mechanics. The academics...
Jazmin Mignaquy Smart Sparrow is excited that the CSIRO Inspark Australia project has been selected by PWC as one of 20 ground-breaking initiatives set to transform...
Jazmin Mignaquy In a single month of the game Minecraft being released for Xbox 360, players clocked a combined one billion hours. That’s 114,000 years of...
Lachlan Ford Before January comes to a close, we at Smart Sparrow would like to share our predictions for the year ahead. Significant adoption of “learning...
Daniel White Recently, our team revisited arguably one of the most important higher ed stories of 2015, which addresses the increasing trend among higher ed institutions...
Jazmin Mignaquy The answer is, “no”. In a recent EdSurge op-ed, digital learning expert George Siemens argues that educational technology is not becoming more human, but...
Jazmin Mignaquy What’s the Point of College? is an age-old tension. Is the primary role of the university as an employment gateway, or as an academic...
Jazmin Mignaquy Last week, the New Horizons spacecraft flew by Pluto, sending back the first close-up pictures of the planet. This, of course, brought up the...
Jazmin Mignaquy Market Wired Adaptive Learning Pioneer Smart Sparrow Launches First Instructional Design Platform, to Allow Faculty and Instructional Designers to Create Engaging and Adaptive Online...
Jazmin Mignaquy There’s perhaps no field more dependent on learning by doing than Medicine. After their first couple years of study, medical students progress to clinical...
Danni Cheng Eighteen months ago a small group of enthusiastic innovators launched the BEST Network with one shared vision – that every student and every teacher,...
Ariel Shoham Since our initial work with the school of medical sciences (SOMS) at UNSW Australia, the use of Smart Sparrow’s Adaptive eLearning Platform (AeLP) has...
Ariel Shoham At Smart Sparrow, we have spent over a decade working closely with hundreds of academics and educators to understand how we can help them...
Ariel Shoham This is the question posed in Cadre’s post “Is adaptive learning just another fad? The answer is still 42”. And while the Answer to...
Alison Murray Each year thousands of candidates enroll in The Institute of Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand (“CA ANZ”) courses all around the world. Candidates...
Sami Derradji Conversations about blended learning or eLearning generally focus on the increased flexibility it provides around time and place (instruction no longer happens just in...
Markus Ebenhoeh What does “iron triangle” mean? For us —and many others in the higher education space— the “iron triangle” refers to the three major challenges...
Jazmin Mignaquy For success after college, students need more than the traditional lecture format that most colleges and universities use. Demand from employers for graduates who...
Jazmin Mignaquy LearnX Impact Awards An exceptional collaboration between subject matter experts, instructional designers and developers. In conjunction with Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand, Smart...
Jazmin Mignaquy Instructional designers face many challenges when building a unique and personalized learning experience: it has to be pedagogically sound while also being engaging; it...
Alison Murray At Smart Sparrow, we believe that it’s time for a more effective and authentic exploration-driven model for science learning, centered on interactive, project-based learning...
David Schonstien With 20% of Australians over 80 affected by dementia and approximately 1 in 20 older people being the target of financial abuse, the finance...
David Rowe True commitment to developing market-leading adaptive courseware for the K-12 sector. Smart Sparrow is pleased to announce its first Gold Preferred Partnership with Dimensional...
Jazmin Mignaquy Each academic specialty has its own specific vocabulary. This is important: to explore academic areas in depth, specific words are required for the tools,...
Daniel White Campus Technology Work is moving forward on a “smart science network” intended to transform how science is taught and learned. Arizona State University was...
Jazmin Mignaquy The American Geophysical Union (AGU) is hosting its Annual Fall Meeting in San Francisco December 15 – 19. We’re proud to sponsor the 2014...
Jazmin Mignaquy In contrast to widely held perceptions, online learning can be as effective as in class learning. Done right, online learning outcomes can significantly outpace...
Greg Higgins What happens when a combination of budgetary limitations, equipment cost, and a lack of access to supervisory staff mean you can no longer offer...
Danni Cheng Forbes A new era of learning which might just change the face of postsecondary pedagogy Higher education has seen a proliferation of new models...
Jazmin Mignaquy Here at Smart Sparrow, we think a lot about how we can harness and make available technology that will make the world smarter. There...
Amanda Newlin We’re excited to announce the release of a key improvement in the Authoring Tool, a more intuitive and compelling way to think about authoring...
Jazmin Mignaquy In August, we announced the launch of Smart Sparrow 2.0 – an improved and updated version of our Adaptive eLearning Platform. Our designers and...
Jazmin Mignaquy Inside Higher Ed Adaptive eLearning platform empowers Prof. Ariel Anbar to teach science in classes of up to 400 students in a rich, interactive...
Jazmin Mignaquy Computerworld InSpark Science Network teaches with games and adaptive sims Smart Sparrow, in partnership with Arizona State University (ASU), has been selected in the...
Jazmin Mignaquy Gates Foundation Next generation challenge aims to develop personalized courseware that improves outcomes for low-income postsecondary students Seattle, September 30, 2014 – The Bill...
Jazmin Mignaquy The premise for MOOCs – Massive Open Online Courses - was simple. Educational institutions deliver free content to the masses, allowing a global community...
Jazmin Mignaquy Design thinking in higher ed has been a lot of talk, but not much action, our CEO Dror Ben-Naim says in a recent article...
Jazmin Mignaquy Market Wired Teacher-Centered Design Approach Results in New Authoring Environment SAN FRANCISCO, CA–(Marketwired – Sep 9, 2014) – Smart Sparrow, an ed-tech company based...
Jazmin Mignaquy Forbes The following narrative is famous in the design world: A man named Sam Farber noticed that his wife’s arthritis made it difficult for...
Jazmin Mignaquy Wired One of the great ironies of online learning is that a tool created to foster personalized learning is actually quite impersonal, in practice....
Jazmin Mignaquy ZDNet Central Queensland University is giving its distance education students the ability to conduct practical laboratory studies of the human body through an online...
Jazmin Mignaquy ABC News – The Drum The furore over the Abbott Government’s proposed deregulation of Australia’s higher education sector misses one critical point: deregulation across...
Jazmin Mignaquy Jones & Bartlett Learning, an Ascend Learning company, and a world-leading provider of instructional, assessment, and learning-performance management solutions for the secondary, post-secondary, and...
Jazmin Mignaquy San Francisco, April 22, 2014 Today, Smart Sparrow, (www.smartsparrow.com) a platform that lets educators create rich, interactive and adaptive learning experiences, announced in collaboration...
Jazmin Mignaquy Higher education is in the midst of a kind of Renaissance. A flurry of activity and experimentation around adaptive learning is taking place on...
Jazmin Mignaquy TechCrunch For most students, learning within the traditional confines of the educational system has been something to be endured, rather than something that’s just...
Jazmin Mignaquy Nursing Review “Health training is about to take a great leap forward with the launch of a virtual learning laboratory that pools a huge...
Jazmin Mignaquy NG Connect Program “We are in the midst of a global transformation in education, fuelled by online technology. One of the slower industries to...
Jazmin Mignaquy ABC: Business Week “It’s one of the fastest growing niches in the start-up sector, Small creative companies are adapting technology to revolutionise many areas...
Jazmin Mignaquy The Australian “This week we officially launch the Biomedical Education Skills and Training Network, or aptly, the BEST Network. In doing so, we are...
Jazmin Mignaquy Australian Financial Review “Just as Google and Facebook let advertisers tailor their messages based on our online behaviour, the same type of technology is...
Jazmin Mignaquy Computerworld “Smart Sparrow uses games and virtual labs to teach maths and science to high school students. Every student will be able to learn...
Jazmin Mignaquy Professor Ariel Anbar “With billions of galaxies in the known universe, each containing billions of stars, what do you think the odds are that...
Jazmin Mignaquy Smart Sparrow is proud to announce our successful bid, lead by UNSW, for the Smart Science initiative as part of the Australian Maths and...
Jazmin Mignaquy Our silver learning impact award “An Australian eLearning platform that emulates the educational benefits of one-on-one tutoring has won a major global award for...
Jazmin Mignaquy Dror Ben-Naim The Chronicle of Higher Education “Imagine more than 1,000 nurses learning how to use defibrillators at once, each delivering shocks to a...
Jazmin Mignaquy The Australian Financial Review “While MOOCs offer online learning in a linear fashion – usually with short videos each followed by a multiple choice...
Jazmin Mignaquy Smart Sparrow’s CEO Dr. Dror Ben-Naim spoke at the conference and accepted the award on behalf of the company. “The fourth annual Tech 23...
Jazmin Mignaquy The Australian Dr Ben-Naim and his partners are now pushing the barriers for learning by developing and commercialising their online Smart Sparrow intelligent tutoring...
Jazmin Mignaquy Sydney Morning Herald “Key medical institutions have joined forces to liberate health education from its current physical limitations and have secured $4.5 million to...
Jazmin Mignaquy Computerworld “New South Wales’ Biomedical Education Skills and Training (BEST) network also received funding for a $3 million biomedical education, skills and training project...
Jazmin Mignaquy Sydney Morning Herald “Using its $3.3million grant, tech company Smart Sparrow will operate the BEST e-learning platform that will incorporate laboratory learning, online lectures...
Jazmin Mignaquy Computerworld “Smart Sparrow has received a $3.3 million grant to trial virtual learning tools and teaching resources for university students across Australia using the...
Jazmin Mignaquy Business Insider “The National Broadband Network (NBN) Enabled Education and Skills Services Program announced $3.3 million for a new national biomedical education initiative to...
Jazmin Mignaquy Computerworld “Technology is changing the face of university education, with virtual learning now becoming an essential part of ‘hands on’ degrees such as medicine,...
Jazmin Mignaquy Smart Sparrow launched at the first international UNSW Adaptive eLearning Forum. The Forum had leading academics from Australia and the U.S come together to...
Jazmin Mignaquy The Australian “If academics don’t take a responsible role in shaping the new strategy that goes with new technologies, then we are going to...
Jazmin Mignaquy Sydney Morning Herald “We have an idea. Let’s stop lecturing, let’s outsource training to computer screens and let’s concentrate on mentoring; that is, putting...
Jazmin Mignaquy Sydney Morning Herald “Why persist with a teaching model dating back to the 1200s when alternative, superior digital communications tools are evolving so rapidly...
Jazmin Mignaquy The Conversation “In higher education, we’ve been talking about “e-learning” for years. But, in practice, we have mostly been teaching in the same way...
Jazmin Mignaquy Sydney Morning Herald “The Smart Sparrow platform – dubbed an example of adaptive e-Learning – can be used by professors to develop customised applications...
Jazmin Mignaquy Computerworld Smart Sparrow has set out to revolutionise e-learning in Australia. We can harness adaptive e-learning tools, which grade student presentations and can assess...
Jazmin Mignaquy New South Innovations “Smart Sparrow have announced a significant round of venture capital investment to accelerate its online Intelligent Tutoring e-learning platform. Smart Sparrow,...
Jazmin Mignaquy