PhET® Interactive Simulations and metacog Announce Partnership to Offer Next Generation Simulations with Advanced Scoring Analytics API

WORCESTER, Mass. and BOULDER, Colo., July 21, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- metacog (http://www.metacog.com) and PhET Interactive Simulations (http://phet.colorado.edu) have entered into a partnership offering an integrated package of PhET's next-generation interoperable simulations along with metacog's streaming data ingest and analytics platform. Available at http://phet.metacog.com, this bundle will enable the creation of virtual science labs and online assessments where authentic student performance can be scored in real-time.

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For over 10 years, the PhET project, based at the University of Colorado Boulder, has created accurate, attractive, and interactive science and math simulations suitable for "grade school to grad school". PhET simulations go beyond traditional educational resources, offering an intuitive, engaging environment where students discover relationships, visualize the invisible, and build connections to everyday life. This new generation of interoperable HTML5 based simulations runs on a wide range of devices and interacts with the browser environment so data about student interactions with the simulations can flow into other browser tools and platforms.

"The new interoperable PhET simulations provide the amazing learner experience for which PhET is known - and generate staggering amounts of rich data about how learners interact with the simulations. metacog can ingest the data from millions of students using the PhET simulations to provide real-time formative feedback to teachers, professors, and learners. It's now possible to replace the junk-food diet of pure multiple-choice testing with a balanced diet including engaging performance assessments - without burdening educators with hand-grading. We're thrilled to join PhET in releasing this bundled offering so the learning and assessment market can benefit from the work of both our teams - and can quickly tackle challenges such as the implementation of instruction and assessment for the Next Generation Science Standards," said Doug Stein, Chief Technology Officer at metacog.

The metacog toolkit is an internet-scale data platform implemented in the Cloud and accessed via standard REST APIs; it ingests real-time data from tens of millions of sessions generated by instrumented interactives, including online simulations, games, virtual labs, e-books, and assessments - and even internet-connected sensors for the Internet of Things (IoT). Publishers, assessment writers, curriculum developers, researchers, school districts, and distance learning programs can easily "metacog" their digital interactives to ingest learner-generated data, analyze or score it, and make it actionable through a variety of visualization and reporting tools.

"We are excited to partner with metacog, as the first company to leverage the new capabilities of our emerging line of interoperable PhET simulations. The combination of PhET plus metacog responds to longstanding stakeholder requests, and opens up a wealth of new opportunities for enhancing teaching, learning, and assessment. I look forward to seeing these opportunities realized as companies experiment with the bundled services, or are inspired to partner with us to leverage PhET's interoperable simulations in other ways," said Kathy Perkins, Director at PhET Interactive Simulations.

The first public demonstration of the partnership's work took place on June 29, 2015 at the metacog booth, #149, at ISTE 2015 at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia.

metacog was spun off from Victory Productions (http://www.victoryprd.com), which has supplied high-stakes assessment, curriculum development, technology, professional learning, and translation services to the education market since 1994. Both companies are headquartered in Worcester, Massachusetts and are Women/Minority-Owned Business Enterprises.

PhET Interactive Simulations, a project of the University of Colorado Boulder, was founded by Nobel Laureate Carl Wieman in 2002. The project is known for its collection of over 130 innovative interactive simulations for STEM education, which are freely available as open educational resources from http://phet.colorado.edu. These powerful educational tools are based on extensive education research, and are used worldwide over 75 million times per year in K-12 and college settings.

Media Contacts:
Owen Lawlor, metacog
508-798-6100

Kathy Perkins, PhET Interactive Simulations
303-492-6714

Related Links
http://phet.metacog.com
http://phet.colorado.edu
http://www.metacog.comhttp://www.metacog.com/

SOURCE metacog; PhET Interactive Simulations

Related Links

http://www.metacog.com

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