metacog to Launch Analytics APIs for Personalized Learning at ISTE 2014

Worcester, MA, June 17, 2014 --(PR.com)-- Data analytics firm metacog (www.metacog.com) will introduce the first advanced analytics APIs that measure learners’ metacognitive processes during instruction and assessment on June 29 at the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) conference in Atlanta, GA. Unlike most analytics products for learning, which provide adaptive feedback based solely on completion and time-on-task metrics, the metacog™ API toolkit “shows the work” and thought processes that learners exhibit during interactions with digital performance-based lessons and assessments, enabling a broader, richer, and more authentic view of what a learner knows and the degree of competency with which that knowledge can be successfully applied.

“Our goal with metacog is to truly authenticate personalized learning by capturing, measuring, and visualizing the metacognitive processes - the thought processes by which knowledge and skills transfer actually take place - that learners use to solve problems, perform tasks, and take tests,” said Doug Stein, Chief Technology Officer at metacog. “The ‘datafication’ of learning is essentially a one-way mirror right now, allowing only a limited view of marginally useful data points that don’t prove competency. The metacog toolkit is a game changer – by opening a window into how learners arrived at an answer, through anonymous analysis of a huge dataset of interactions, we give the industry a powerful tool for customizing how it approaches instruction and assessments.”

The metacog toolkit is an Internet-scale API implemented in the Cloud to handle real-time data from tens of millions of sessions generated by instrumented interactives, including online simulations, games, virtual labs, ebooks, and assessments. The toolkit enables the detection and measurement of metacognitive processes demonstrated when learners use instrumented objects. Using standard web technologies, content providers – publishers, assessment writers, curriculum developers, school districts, and distance learning programs – can easily “metacog” their digital interactives to gather intelligent, anonymous learner-generated data and make it actionable through a variety of visualization and reporting tools.

While a pre-release version of the toolkit has been available to a select group of developers, the formal launch will take place on June 29 at the metacog booth, #3066, at ISTE 2014 at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta, GA.

metacog was founded by Victoria Porras, the owner of Victory Productions (www.victoryprd.com), which has been supplying high-stakes assessment, curriculum development, technology, professional learning, and translation services to the education market since 1994. Both companies are headquartered in Worcester, Massachusetts. Victory Productions is a certified and registered Women/Minority-Owned Business Enterprise.