Pearson Unveils Six of the World's Best Edtech Start-ups

Back in February Pearson set out to identify the most promising edtech startup companies that share Pearson’s commitment to improving people’s lives through learning. We began by asking Pearson’s businesses what challenges and opportunities they want to address, and then asked them to select their startup match. Over 200 startups from nearly 20 countries across the globe applied for the Pearson Catalyst for Education program.

We have announced our inaugural class of partners and over the next three months, they’ll be working with sponsors from across Pearson to build pilot projects. Along the way, they will participate in a series of mentor sessions from subject-matter experts from both Pearson and external partners – covering topics such as scaling your company, social media marketing and raising capital.

The six participating startups and the business challenge they will be addressing are:

• Certification test prep application: VLinks (Chicago), a platform that gives world-class content creators the ability to deliver courses to learners on mobile devices and across the web. (Chicago)
• Health profession simulations: Spongelab (Toronto), a science education website for teachers and students that provides a free online collection of multimedia including educational games, videos, images, and lesson plans, with a focus on game-based learning.
• MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) premium content-as-a-service and access: Ace Learning Company (Los Gatos), an institutional and publisher platform, as well as a direct-to-student marketing website.
• New student web services: ClassOwl (Palo Alto), a social academic platform made by students for students, which provides a single planner that allows students to follow their classes and student groups in one place.
• Repurposing existing literature content into a new digital offering: ActivelyLearn™ (Seattle), an online e-reader that empowers teachers to reach students inside a digital text.
• Tool to identify student cheating: Full Stack Data Science (Washington), an analysis shop that specialises in natural language and text processing with big data and applied machine learning.

The startups were selected based on a number of criteria including, team makeup; clear product focus; succinct and unambiguous vision; ability for viable implementation during the three-month pilot period; potential to be scalable, impact the wider industry and be disruptive; and fit with Pearson.

Follow the journey

Throughout the three-month pilot, we’ll share videos, interviews and updates from the startups here on the PearsonLabs blog and the Catalyst website – so be sure to check back and follow all of us along this exciting journey. We’ll also be tweeting from @PearsonLabs #PearsonCatalyst.