Carnegie Learning Inc., a provider of K-12 education solutions born out of Carnegie Mellon University, announced on Thursday it has been awarded a $2 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education to be received over five years.
The grant comes from the Institute of Education Sciences and the National Center for Education Research within the Department of Education. The funds will be used to field test improvements to Carnegie Learning’s MATHia software, which provides students with one-to-one coaching in mathematics.
In order to field test the software, Carnegie Learning joined SEERNet, a research network led by the nonprofit organization focused on creating innovation in education. SEERNet consists of five research teams and a network head. Each of the five teams also received grants in order to research equitable digital learning at scale.
“This grant expands our opportunity to accelerate student learning for all by testing a wide range of improvements to MATHia, and it further advances best practices in mathematics classrooms,” Carnegie Learning Founder and Chief Scientist Steven Ritter said. “It also allows us to collaborate with other researchers so we can more efficiently innovate in the digital learning space with multiple strands of research.”
At Carnegie Learning, Ritter and his team will integrate MATHia with UpGrade, which is an open-source platform meant to improve instructional equity, provide better motivational support to students and provide insights to help teachers better guide learning.
“We’re thrilled that our research team has this opportunity to continue doing the work of not only incorporating research-based best practices into our education technology solutions, but also in shaping and driving that research,” Carnegie Learning CEO Barry Malkin said. “At Carnegie Learning, we have always wanted the same thing as educators, administrators and policymakers: for students to learn as effectively as possible, using technology that augments the wonderful work that teachers do every day.”
