Even more successful was Mindprint Learning, who were 2017’s Gold Award Winner in the Learning Assessment Category, and also presented at 2017’s EdTech Innovation Showcase. Attempting to bridge the gap between innovations in neurocognitive assessment and low attainment, Mindprint offers teachers an online program that can establish executive functioning, memory, reasoning skills, and student speed. Results from this online screening program are used to automatically generate personalized learning plans for every student in math, reading, writing, and study skills that include evidence-based strategies based on that student’s unique strengths and needs.
At Reimagine, we believe that the success of TU Incubator companies can partly be attributed to the incubator’s provenance within a university. Among the hundreds of edtech applications to last year’s awards, both Infercabulary and Mindprint gained the particular approval of our judges because of their explicit, evidence-based capacity to improve learning outcomes – and we believe that close relationships between universities, incubators, and edtech companies can only be conducive to more effective, evidence-based edtech solutions; and, in turn, a higher level of edtech entrepreneurship emanating from universities.
Other universities are seeking to offer similar initiatives. The University College London’s EDUCATE project, based at the UCL Knowledge Lab and organized in partnership with the British Educational Suppliers Association, Nesta, UCL Engineering, and F6S, is offering start-ups, SMEs, entrepreneurs and educators the opportunity to develop, evaluate and improve their products and services with the use of research evidence.
In similar vein, the University of Pennsylvania – whose Wharton Business School are co-organizers of the Reimagine Education Awards & Conference – helped their Graduate School of Education to launch EDSi, or the Education Design Studio, Inc. At the time of its inception – 2013 – EDSi purported to be the “first startup incubator in the world solely focused on education”, and, like TU Incubator, matched entrepreneurs with investors, industry experts, and GSE faculty advisors to help foster effective educational innovation.
Such initiatives are spreading around the world. Though not explicitly focused on edtech innovation, IIT Delhi in India has sought to encourage entrepreneurship by allowing its PhD students to try and convert their theses into startups. The prestigious Indian Institute of Technology – existing at a moment where concerns exist about the opportunities available to Indian graduates in a highly-saturated job market – will create a space where selected graduates can receive the seed funding and mentorship typical of any incubator, and the academic assistance and working space necessary to unite theoretical, research-based knowledge with entrepreneurial success.
We’re invariably keen to explore any opportunities for closer, more fruitful collaboration between edtech startups and academia – it’s one major reason for pursuing this initiative. We invite anyone who has a similar story to reach out to us, and also hope that all startups who have achieved incubator success will engage with our competition, and network, this year.
Anyone wishing to learn more about the TU Incubator can email the team at incubator@towson.edu, or find them on Twitter at https://twitter.com/@TUincubator.