Giving Compass' Take:

• Cerego Insights promises to measure students' agility, diligence and knowledge using artificial intelligence. 

• How can evaluations like this one offer new or different insights into students? 

• Learn how to combat AI bias that may put students at risk.

Companies that make learning software now gather unprecedented amounts of data on student behavior as students do things like read online textbooks or study for tests with digital review tools. But when online learning aids can study students, could that give professors new ways to help learners? And how far is too far in trying to apply such student-activity data?

Those are the deep questions raised by an announcement today by Cerego, a company which makes a software platform designed to let students review and quiz themselves on class materials to prepare for exams. The company’s latest feature, called Cerego Insights, promises to score each learner’s behavior in the system, rating how they compare to other users going through the same material. So far the software attempts to measure three aspects of each student’s “cognitive and behavioral profile”: agility, diligence and knowledge.

Andrew Smith Lewis, co-founder and CEO of Cerego, says the analysis gives teachers (or business leaders in the case of corporate training), a “new model for understanding talent.”

“You and I might be at the very same level” as far as the grade, Smith Lewis says. “But one of us might be gritty, and one of us might be agile, and we can determine that by the data we have.”

Smith Lewis says the software uses an artificial-intelligence algorithm that weighs aspects such as how quickly students respond compared to how accurate their answers are, how well students retain material over time, how well they stay on track and how closely they follow instructions.

Read the full article about Cerego Insights by Jeffrey R. Young at EdSurge.