Dive Brief:

• On Wednesday, Knewton launched a free tool that offers automated personalized learning for students.
• Teachers can assign concepts to students in the system and track their progress as the program automatically assigns questions and content that help that student learn.
• The program uses artificial intelligence to determine what material will best help a particular student based on their learning profile and other, similar students.

Dive Insight:

For years, Knewton has been distributing content from major educational publishers to students and measuring how well particular pieces of material help students learn. It used its artificial intelligence program to calibrate what content to give to which student at certain points in their learning trajectory.

But that program has been locked behind an expensive paywall. Now the it is free and won’t just include predetermined curriculum from educational publishers. Knewton Founder and CEO Jose Ferreira says he wants to “democratize access.” Teachers can now create their own curriculum, and the program will eventually include material from hundreds of other sources.

But not everything will make it into the “robot tutor,” as he called it. Experienced educators and former educators read each piece of content, tag it, and vet it before it goes in front of students. And the robot tutor will only get smarter when it comes to figuring out what works for students — as more classrooms use it, it gets better at determining what works for different kinds of learners.

The goal, Ferreira says, is to give teachers the time they need to actually work with students, not just write and curate curriculum. “Teachers need more time and better outcomes and they need a magic pill that’s going to make that happen,” Ferreira told Wired. “That’s what we’re trying to give them.”