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Archive for February, 2010

Grockit Names Chris Strausser Chief Marketing Officer

By posted February 25, 2010

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 23, 2010 – Grockit (www.grockit.com), an online educational company that leverages the Web to deliver real-time and adaptive social learning games, announced today that Chris Strausser has joined the company as chief marketing officer. Chris will be responsible for Grockit’s B2C and B2B Marketing and will report to founder and CEO Farb Nivi.

Strausser is a marketing veteran having spent over 20 years building educational and consumer brands. Most recently, Strausser served as chief marketing and sales officer at Chela Education Financing, which was sold to Nelnet, a leading education financing company with net assets exceeding $20 billion. Before this, Strausser held various positions at Kaplan Education for five years including chief marketing officer of SCORE! Learning.

Earlier in his career, Strausser ran marketing and product development for Jamba Juice when the company was in its infancy and had just secured its first major round of venture financing. He helped lead the company through its rapid growth phase adding more than 200 new stores. Strausser began his career at Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising, holding the position of vice president, management supervisor when he left to join Pepsico where he held senior marketing positions in the restaurant division with Taco Bell.

“Chris possesses the rare combination of proven marketing prowess with educational experience. He’s a perfect addition to our leadership team,” said Farb Nivi, CEO of Grockit. “In the short time since Grockit launched, we have created a whole new way for students to learn and a whole new type of learning environment. With Chris on board we look forward to scaling the company and expanding our suite of products.”

“I think Grockit is the future of education and I have been impressed with the platform that Farb and the team have built,” said Strausser. “I share the team’s core belief that integrating technology and the web into the educational environment allows for a more efficient, robust experience that will produce results. I am really thrilled to be joining Grockit to help roll this out.”

About Grockit
Grockit was founded in 2007 to leverage the social benefits of the Internet, improve academic achievement and to extend learning outside of the classroom. Through the application of social networking and online gaming technology, the Grockit learning platform offers students a fun and engaging way to master academic skills and to prepare for standardized tests. The diagnostic, prescriptive and adaptive nature of the platform ensures that each student receives an individualized learning experience. Grockit was founded by Farb Nivi, a former Princeton Review Teacher of the Year and academic director at Kaplan. Headquartered in San Francisco, Grockit is funded by Atlas Venture, Benchmark Capital and Integral Capital Partners and angel investors including Reid Hoffman (founder, LinkedIn) and Mark Pincus (founder and CEO, Zynga). For more information, please visit www.grockit.com.

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Announcing Grockit's Summer 2010 Graduate Research Internship

By posted February 3, 2010

Grockit from aboveI’m happy to announce that Grockit will be offering its paid summer research internship program for the summer of 2010. This is the second year that we’re doing this (thanks again, Angela!), and I think it’s a great opportunity for doctoral students to apply their own research experience to a system that a large (and growing) community of learners uses everyday. It’s worth mentioning that Grockit has a large and interesting set of educational data, a variety of research interests, a very talented team, and a fantastic work environment. I just posted details about this program (with an application form) on the 2010 Summer Research Internship, and I encourage you to check it out.

I wanted to share a few thoughts on why we’re offering this, what we have in mind for the program, and why you (or perhaps someone you know) should consider applying.

Grockit, as you may know, is a San Francisco-based web startup building a platform for — and a community around — synchronous collaborative learning games. We strive to provide our growing global network of learners with a smart platform informed by peer assistance and adaptive support. Towards this end, we’re constantly exploring new ways to support collaborative learning online, and we’re frequently examining and applying techniques for analyzing the learning data that we’ve been collecting. One reason that we’re offering this program is to expand on the ways in which we pursue these goals.

Two of the challenges in studying computational systems for peer learning — both of which I faced in completing my own graduate work — is that these systems can take quite some time to build, and it can often take even longer to cultivate a sufficiently large community of participating learners. As a result, the time required to get from hypothesis to data analysis can be (or at least can feel) quite long. At Grockit, we’ve been making good progress with regards to both challenges, and hope that this internship will provide an enterprising graduate student with the opportunity to speed up this process for their own research questions.

In addition to the research opportunity, we’re offering a program stipend, an accommodation stipend, and a travel stipend. You’ll also get a healthy breakfast and lunch cooked in the office every weekday and the chance to spend your summer in vibrant San Francisco. So if you are a doctoral student studying in a university in the United States and interested in applying for a summer research position with us, I’d encourage you to submit an application.

The deadline is March 1, 2010, and you can apply today.

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