Irish technology company CCKF is to grow to 25 skilled positions after completing deals in the US with Colorado Technical University and American InterContinental University through its partner Career Education Corporation.
Currently employing 18 people, CCKF is now looking to increase its employee numbers to 25 by early 2014. The new positions will be in the areas of educational methods and data analytics, targeting people with postdoctoral and masters level qualifications.
The company says the deal completions and new job prospects are the payback from R&D investment in its Realize adaptive learning platform.
Adaptive learning is the use of data-driven tools to design coursework that responds to individual students’ abilities. Courses featuring adaptive technology typically use sophisticated algorithms to constantly adjust content, giving students extra help to master concepts or to skip ones they already understand.
Adaptive learning systems
The adaptive learning system that CCKF has built is powered by an intelligent learning engine utilising intelligent algorithms and data analytics toolsthat are designed to empower both the learner and teacher. The system is ‘content agnostic’, meaning that it is not restricted to specific courses or subject types. Instead, the company’s adaptive-powered ‘learning maps’ can stretch across a diversity of courses, academic programs and even multiple institutions.
Preliminary results released by Career Education Corporation following the initial adaptive learning technology project indicated increased rates of passing grades, decreased student withdrawals, improved persistence and higher levels of engagement, as just some of the student performance metrics it is beginning to achieve with this new adaptive learning technology.
“With this new technology, Career Education has effectively combined art and science so instructors in our schools know from minute to minute, which students are succeeding and which need additional instruction,” said Scott Steffey, CEO and president of Career Education.
“It’s an academic and technological breakthrough that advances cognitive science. Adaptive learning, supported by intellipath technology, allows us to visualise how each student learns through their interaction with the material.”
The technology has already been used by students in more than 11,000 course enrollments in 300 sections including English Composition, Mathematics, Accounting and Business Management. Career Education Corporation now plans to extend its use of the adaptive learning platform, branded ‘intellipath’ and move to a full scale implementation across the curriculum at its other institutions.
“We are really excited about the very positive results generated from the use of our technology in the US and the plans of Career Education to now embark on one of higher education’s broadest rollouts of adaptive learning to date,” said CCKF’s CEO David Collery.
“CCKF is now firmly establishing itself as a global player in the adaptive learning field, demonstrating the capacity of the Irish software industry to compete at the highest level in areas such as artificial intelligence and analytics. We look forward to growing our talent pool at our R&D centre over the coming months to support our ambitious business plans for the k-12, higher education and corporate learning markets,” Collery added.
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