New York Times with screens of Grockit’s new facebook canvas app

Grockit in CNet with a link to Grockit Answers

Venturebeat insights on Grockit funding news

Grockit makes the Spark of Genius series in Mashable

The Wall Street Journal mentioned the news. And they mentioned again here.

TechCrunch was the first to cover Grockit Answers

HackEducation expands on the funding news

USNews & World Report comes in with a new angle

Grockit Raises $7 Million to Drive Social Learning

Previous Backers Lead Round; NewSchools Venture Fund and GSV Capital Make First Investments in Grockit

SAN FRANCISCO, CA. (October 17, 2011) – Grockit, a social learning company, announced today that it has received just over $7 million in Series D venture funding led by Atlas Venture, a current investor in the company. Benchmark Capital and Integral Capital Partners, both return investors, also participated in the round, along with new investors NewSchools Venture Fund and GSV Capital Corp. (Nasdaq:GSVC). The funding will be used to support Grockit’s growth both domestically and internationally. The company’s total outside investment to date is over $24 million.

“Technology like Grockit’s has the power to transform the way students learn,” said Jennifer Carolan, Associate Partner at NewSchools Venture Fund. “When we invest in companies, we look for meaningful innovation in the education sector, the potential for big impact and a strong management team. Grockit meets all these criteria and it adds to them a very happy customer base. We’re thrilled to support the team at Grockit.”

Improving scores through social learning
Today’s students use technology to communicate, play games, share videos and more. Grockit combines the online tools students are already using, such as social networking and gaming, with an adaptive learning platform, to help students better prepare for college entrance exams, including the SAT, ACT, GMAT, LSAT, and GRE. Compared to independent studiers, social learners on Grockit spend 30 percent more time solving problems, solve more than twice as many problems, and are 10 percent more likely to answer questions correctly.

“The education sector is due to be transformed by a new wave of disruptive companies. Grockit has built a framework for social learning that will engage millions of college-bound students across the globe,” said Michael Moe, Founder and CEO of GSV Capital. “Grockit is ambitious; they’re focused on extending studying where students currently socialize online; and they have a plan to significantly grow the universe of online social learners.”

Expanding its base of customers around the world
In addition to the products available at www.grockit.com, the company is also partnering with higher education institutions to provide test prep as part of an academic institution’s study aids. This month, Georgetown University will begin providing students and alumni with access to Grockit’s GRE, GMAT and LSAT test prep programs. In the coming months, Grockit will be rolling out similar programs with universities in the U.S. and around the world.

“Grockit has made all the right moves to become a dominant player in this space,” said Jeff Fagnan, Partner at Atlas Venture. “Grockit is at the epicenter of the education technology space, and we’re excited about the future for the company.”

In the last month, Grockit has:
● Surpassed 10,000,000 questions answered by learners,
● Integrated with Facebook’s updated Open Graph API to make studying more social,
● Introduced a “one-for-one” business model to help under-resourced students achieve dreams of higher education,
● Expanded in India with a new product to help students prepare for the IIM-CAT, a required test for applying to India’s most prestigious management school,
● Added a new VP of Engineering to its growing management team,
● And, together with Startup Weekend and the Kauffman Foundation, announced a new Startup Weekend EDU series around the world.

“We’re growing quickly, and now is the time to accelerate the business. Every day, we add the equivalent of one American high school to our user base,” said Roy Gilbert, Grockit CEO. “While we continue to build from that momentum in the next year, our goals and focus will remain the same: to help more students learn by using the incredible power and scale of the Web.”

About the Author: Rusty Greiff is Grockit’s Chief Strategy and Corporate Development Officer and a resident of the greater Washington DC area.  Rusty has an extensive background in politics and education.

For over a year Grockit has developed and managed private-label and co-branded products for K-12 schools, virtual schools, charter school networks and major online Universities.  Today, I’m proud to share that Grockit and Georgetown University have partnered to provide premium online test prep and collaborative learning for Georgetown undergraduate students, and we will co-market Grockit premium subscriptions at a significant discount for Georgetown alumni.

As one of the most selective academic universities in the world, Georgetown continues to drive online strategies and initiatives that improve student success – we are excited that they have chosen Grockit as a solution for their students and alumni.  Georgetown will leverage Grockit’s personalized assessment engine, adaptive and social learning platform and gaming mechanics to drive superior student engagement.  Like us, they believe in the power of social and collaborative learning to prepare students.

We’re looking forward to working with like-minded universities in the future.  I promise to update Grockit followers with posts every time we create new relationships with Universities, so that you can know when your school has joined the Grockit community.

Just in case you’re wondering, here are just a few reasons why Grockit is attractive to major universities:

* Over the past few years, more than a million students all over the world have used Grockit to practice and study together online to achieve their best scores on standardized tests

* Grockit’s social learning has proven to help students learn more, faster and perform better

* Grockit has figured out how to add and move massive amounts of content, check and curate that content quickly

* Grockit already works with accomplished, forward-thinking schools with strong support and broad awareness

* Grockit is a leader in developing for the most pervasive and important platforms for students and teachers

* Grockit is actively trying to improve learning outcomes for millions of students in under-resourced communities

In helping students meet these challenges, we are thrilled to announce the official launch of the Grockit IIM-CAT group!  Here’s the first story covering this news, see the press release below.

With Grockit’s Indian user base growing fast, (in 2010, 27% of GMAT students in India used Grockit) it’s evident that CAT 2011 students are also seeking online solutions. Test Series and practice materials run upwards of Rs. 5000 ($112), and restrict students’ learning environment to test centers, packed classrooms, and the confines of a physical textbook. Grockit expands these borders, providing students 24/7 access to adaptive customizable assessments, social group study, detailed strength and weakness reports and a computer-based experience similar to the one on Test Day.

We are launching with over 3,000 practice questions covering every topic area presented on CAT since 2001. Since we’ve found Verbal Ability to be the most important section for students to practice, two-thirds of our content will be in these areas. We’ve made the Quantitative Ability and Data Interpretation sections super difficult, drawing from the expertise of our experienced CAT authors, editors and IIM alumni. And we plan to continue to build out our curriculum on a rolling basis, using information from newly released tests and ongoing feedback from our users. See our official press release, below.

Grockit Introduces Test Prep for India’s CAT Exam

September 28, 2011 — Grockit, the leader in collaborative and social learning, today announced the availability of its test preparation program for India’s Common Admission Test (CAT), the required exam for admission into Indian Institutes of Management (IIM). Grockit, which is currently used by over a quarter of students in India studying for the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT), is releasing the IIM CAT program in response to customer demand and the company’s rapidly growing Indian user base.

Grockit’s IIM CAT prep differs from existing programs in that it’s built around an adaptive, social and interactive experience for students. Users have the advantage of preparing for the exam in a virtual group setting and receiving real-time feedback from their peers and Grockit tutors. This “anytime and anywhere” approach allows students who may not live in big cities with easily accessible testing centers to have access to an affordable, web-based alternative. The personalised study plan format adapts to each individual user’s level and shifts as the student improves and progresses.  And since the IIM CAT recently moved from a paper-based test to a computer-based test, Grockit’s web-based format gives students a similar experience to what they’ll have during the real test.

“Students in India are incredibly enthusiastic about Grockit,” said Roy Gilbert, CEO, Grockit. “We’ve seen remarkable growth in India over the last year, and we’re excited to help our Indian users tackle one of the highest-stakes exams in the world.”

Grockit created the test prep program for the IIM CAT by working with partners on the ground in India, leading American and Indian authors, and IIM CAT specialists and alumni. The pricing for the program is significantly lower than alternative options currently available; for more information visit our programs page and IIM CAT blog.

“Grockit is the most addictive, creative and engaging product for learning I’ve come across. Thanks guys!” says Shuba, a student from Chennai, India.

The launch of Grockit’s CAT test prep follows Grockit’s launch of Rupee pricing and localised Indian payment options earlier this year. Currently, more than 25 percent of people taking the GMAT in India already use Grockit to study, answering 1.25 million study questions in the past year alone.

Grockit has integrated with Facebook to help you ace your next exam with your friends. In the coming weeks, Grockit will make it easier for students to create online study groups within Grockit and solve problems with friends. What this means is that you’ll be able to find friends to study with, create permanent Grockit study rooms, and share your team’s progress on your Facebook profile.

We’re excited about this for a couple of reasons. First, this solves a big problem for people that use Grockit. Many people want to study with friends they interact with in other parts of their lives, and we haven’t had a great way of doing that within Grockit. Now, with our new Facebook integration, students can quickly select-and-add study partners from among their friends, even if their friends aren’t using Grockit today.

Second, this was a result of amazingly fast design and engineering work. Thanks to the fine folks at Facebook who delivered this API, we’ve been able to build something we think will be beneficial for our users in just a couple of short weeks.

The result is something that we think will make online social learning a lot easier to use. And this cross-team work matches up with our Grockit core value of Collaborteam — our made-up word to describe the transparent, selfless way we work together.

Here’s the press release from F8, the Facebook Conference.

Grockit Announces Facebook Integration to Make Studying More Social

SAN FRANCISCO – September 22, 2011 – Today at f8, Facebook’s developer conference, Grockit, a social learning company, announced a new integration with Facebook that will make it even easier for students around the world to create Grockit study groups with their friends. Now people using Grockit can quickly create “Study Rooms”, invite their Facebook friends and prepare together for college entrance examinations, such as the SAT, ACT, LSATs, GMATs, GREs, and more. Students can also track and share academic progress and milestone achievements towards their academic goals on their Facebook profiles.

“Millions of students are on Facebook, but they aren’t just socializing. They are helping each other with homework, sharing school resources, and in general hacking together a social learning experience online,” said Farbood Nivi, founder and Chief Product Officer, Grockit. “The cool thing about our new Facebook integration is that students can create, control, and access Grockit Study Rooms right from their Facebook profiles. Study Rooms include tons of content to help with studying, from practice questions, to video lessons, and even personal tutoring.”

Earlier this year, Grockit released research showing that students who study together on Grockit do twice as much work — and get answers correct more often — as students who study alone.

In addition to creating new study groups, people using Grockit can share the total number of hours spent studying, the total number of questions attempted, and their progress studying within Grockit via their Facebook profiles. People can control how their activity is shared with friends on Facebook from their Facebook privacy settings.

To learn more about Grockit’s Facebook integration, please visit: Grockit.com/social

Today at Grockit we are proud to announce a fundamental shift in our business model, a shift that we believe is one more step in this necessary human movement towards increased access for everyone, including and especially those who are less privileged.

From today forward, Grockit will be a one-for-one business. For every Grockit account purchased, we will provide one year of free access to Grockit Academy to an under-served student. To do this we have partnered with the very organizations that work tirelessly everyday to reach and support these students. Organizations like Higher Achievement, KIPP, Level Playing Field Institute, Magic Johnson Foundation, the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship, and TLABs are just some of the amazing groups that Grockit customers can direct their one-for-one purchase towards.

Our desire to create Grockit for Good was motivated by the same reason I founded Grockit in the first place.

After teaching for over a decade I was unsatisfied with the progress of education, especially in light of rapidly advancing technologies that were not reaching students. I was also unsatisfied with the high costs that limited access and scale.

With that, we started Grockit to bring adaptive, social-learning to hundreds of thousands of students all over the world and we believe that our shift to a one-for-one business model is another step forward in our mission to bring effective, engaging education to everyone. We’re calling this new model, Grockit For Good, and if you know an organization that you think would be a good partner, we want to know. Grockit has always been about social-learning, and with Grockit For Good our customers are doing even more to help the world learn.

Farb Nivi
Founder Grockit

The primary learning activity on Grockit is problem solving, so it’s probably not surprising that Grockit has developed a large (and growing) library of problems to solve. What began as a few hundred problems has quickly turned into hundreds of thousands of questions, answers, explanations, and more. Over the past few years, we’ve developed an assortment of technologies and processes to make this possible. Over the past few weeks, we’ve been revamping this infrastructure in some powerful ways, and I wanted to share a few (technical) notes on what we did, how, and why.

When you’ve got tens or hundreds of people authoring problems, things inevitably get messy. Invisible markup affects question formatting in unexpected ways, mathematical expressions are input in several different ways, questions often get modified and revised by a sequence of different authors, and it gets increasingly difficult to figure out who changed what, when, and how. In short, a fully-featured content management system (CMS) was in order. At the same time, however, there are some meaningful customizations that we made to our editor that a CMS wasn’t designed to support: everything from AP exam question types, alignments to various state standards, images externally hosted on Amazon S3, special handling of long reading passages, supporting open-ended responses to certain math problems, a combination of skill tags and taxonomies, and a slew of other requirements specific to the type of “content” that we needed to “manage.” Ultimately, we decided to take a hybrid approach, using a customized application for the high-level structure, and a version control system for low-level content management. The first challenge was building this hybrid application (an engineering problem), and the second challenge was moving from our existing system to the new one (a process problem). I’ll expand a bit on how we approached the engineering problem and how we tackled the process problem.

Grockit’s new content editor banishes hidden HTML markup by replacing the standard rich-text editor with a plain-text editor that uses Markdown to signal formatting. Markdown was designed to keep things simple and intuitive, and that’s just what we were looking for. In order to know who changed what, when, and how, we rely on Git, a distributed version control system frequently used in software development, where many different people are changing different parts of a system over time. Beyond accounting for every last text edit, git allows us to do full-text search of content, and even do full-text search through past versions of content. Think “track-changes”, but on steroids. Git is generally accessed from the file system, but we were looking for a simple web front-end for our system. The team at GitHub, an immensely popular website for collaboration on open-source software development, put together a fantastic tool that we adopted and modified, named Gollum. Gollum was developed as a git-backed wiki (in the form of a Ruby Sinatra application) that uses Markdown for formatting, and incorporates the browser-ready MathJax engine for beautiful LaTeX typesetting of mathematical expressions in modern web browsers. For example: \[ P\left(X_{vi} = 1|\theta_v,\beta_i,\alpha_i,\gamma_i\right) = \gamma_i + \frac{1-\gamma_i}{1+e^{-\alpha_i(\theta_v - \beta_i)}}\]

Loosely-coupling the Gollum-derived editor with the Monarch-based application afforded us with a customized editor that supported change tracking and reverting, full-text search of current and past version of content, much-simplified markup, more beautiful math, and a slew of other improvements and enhancements. This new system, however, assumed that text is in Markdown format. All of the existing questions, answers, and explanations weren’t, though, and that left something of a challenge.

The challenge: convert each bit of content in the Grockit system from free-form HTML to a Grockit-flavored Markdown without losing the necessary visual styling, then verify that the conversion was done correctly, fix it if it wasn’t, and then deploy the approved version to the production system once ready. Then repeat, hundreds of thousands of times. Clearly, we needed an automated process. We know that automated doesn’t necessarily mean accurate, however, so we decided that a partially-automated, partially-manual process was the best way to ensure that Grockit questions, answers, and explanations would continue to be accurate. Here’s what we did:

The first step, an automated process to convert HTML to Gollum-ready Markdown (codename: Smeagol) got us started. Some of the changes were so minor that no manual verification was necessary, and the new version could be immediately deployed to the production system. For the rest, we used Amazon’s Mechanical Turk service, for each item, to ask three different people whether or not the before and after (i.e. Smeagol and Gollum) content looked the same. If all three agreed that the conversion worked, we felt confident in switching to the Gollumnized Markdown. If not, we needed someone else to check and fix the change. For this, we built on the Pivotal Tracker API to build up an organized to-do list for a team of Grockit content authors to work through. In our trial run with Algebra I in the Academy, 45,000 conversion quality ratings were submitted in the first hour alone! Once a correction was saved, Grockit would start displaying the Gollumnized version. The result: A rolling process (without race conditions!) to update all of Grockit’s content, one field at a time, to a much cleaner, simpler, more trackable, more searchable, more flexible form moving forward.

TLAB Adopts Grockit’s Social Learning Technologies for Test Prep

Detroit-based organization to provide students with access to Grockit’s online ACT prep tools

DETROIT – August 17, 2011 – The Technology Laboratory and Professional Development Center (TLAB), a Detroit-based non-profit accelerated learning program, today announced an agreement with Grockit that will enable the organization to offer Grockit tools to students preparing for the ACT, which is a mandatory test for all 11th-grade students in Michigan. Students will be able to access Grockit’s ACT preparatory tools from their own computer or at one of TLAB’s dedicated computer labs.

“Grockit is one of the few providers with keen insight and a solution for educating people in the 21st Century. Grockit is leveraging the power of the web in helping students get the tools and the guidance they need to perform at exceptional levels academically and especially on standardized tests,” said Dr. Clarence Nixon, Jr., founder of the TLAB program. “We’re excited to be working with them in helping our students prepare academically, master the ACT, and do so in a way that’s more effective and more affordable than the other methods out there.”

With Grockit, students work online with other students and with tutors to learn key concepts, solve practice problems, and develop test-taking strategies. More than 1 million users have used Grockit to date, and the service’s highly interactive and collaborative social learning model has proven to engage students: Compared to Grockit’s average independent studier, the average Grockit group studier spends three times as much time solving problems per study session; solves more than twice as many problems per study session; and is 10 percent more likely to answer questions correctly.

“Grockit helped me connect and learn with other students my own age, and with that help I improved my score on the ACT from 18 to 30 in less than three months,” said Jayleon Davis, a TLAB student in Dearborn Heights, Mich. “Grockit makes studying fun, and it’s helping me gain confidence as I work to achieve my dream score of a perfect 36 on the ACT.”

TLAB centers use data-driven software applications and the support of experienced tutors to help accelerate learning for students ranging from kindergarten to college. Their core academic programs are ACT prep, math, reading, vocabulary, writing, language, public speaking, research and development and leadership development.

About TLAB

TLAB is a faith-based, nonprofit, accelerated learning center founded in Detroit in 2007. It is focused on creating extraordinary academic achievement, among any and all  students, to prepare them to assume leadership roles in careers as entrepreneurs, physicians, nurses, research scientists, and other professions. The majority of TLAB’s 300 students come from Michigan, but we have attracted students from Atlanta; Phoenix; Jacksonville, Florida; Ohio, Minnesota, New York, Georgia, North Carolina, and Lake Providence, Louisiana.

About Grockit

Grockit was created to improve academic achievement and extend learning outside of the classroom. By applying adaptive learning algorithms and innovative social networking and online gaming technologies, students experience a fun and engaging way to master academic skills and achieve personal best scores on standardized tests. The diagnostic, prescriptive and adaptive nature of the underlying Grockit platform ensures that each student receives a personalized learning experience, designed to help them overcome areas of academic weakness. Founded in 2007 by Farb Nivi, a former Teacher of the Year for The Princeton Review and academic director at Kaplan, Grockit is headquartered in San Francisco and has received funding from Atlas Venture, Benchmark Capital, Integral Capital Partners and prominent angel investors including Reid Hoffman (founder, LinkedIn) and Mark Pincus (founder and CEO, Zynga). For more information, please visit www.grockit.com.

Once you’ve bolted-on visionary inspiration and beautiful design to achieve a high degree of product/market fit for your web application, it’s time to optimize the business and split-testing is one of the most powerful tools you have in your arsenal.

Our custom split-test reporting lets us really get a good handle on the lifetime behavior (and -value) of a particular group of users who have a specific and explicit Grockit experience. This goes above and beyond the more standard ‘did more people click through on this variation?’ flavor of split-test reporting.

But wait, there’s more:

Segmenting your users by source & acquisition channel is a widespread best practice, most often done by tacking on custom URL parameters to the end of, say, an Adwords destination or email newsletter URL. We do this too. In fact, you must be smart about segmenting your users when you get to the scaling step of the Startup Pyramid in order to develop your marketing channels.

At Grockit, we’ve connected this type of off-site channel segmentation with our on-site split-test reporting. When you land on Grockit as a new visitor, we create a guest account for you, which is then populated with all of your user data if you choose to signup, and continues to track your usage of Grockit, so we know how well we are serving you.

One of the bits of data that we store for each user is the original URL that you landed on the first time you came to Grockit. This lets us run a split-test comparison report on any group of different landing URLs/URL parameters. Using this tool, we can analyze both off-site variables like advertising channels, and also on-site factors like landing pages that position Grockit differently for different groups of users.

All this is, of course, in the service of ironing out the kinks in your scalable startup equation, and not just for the sake of metrics alone.

Whew.  What a year!  2009 will be remembered by us as the year Grockit went from a basic practice tool for the GMAT to full-feature learning environment that supports many types of curriculum including GMAT, SAT, ACT, and GRE test prep.  We are quite pleased with the growth in the product, customers, and team this year.  There is much work left to do, we know.  But let’s take a moment to celebrate our progress in 2009.

It was only February when Grockit came out of private beta and into the public with the GMAT group.  With that came the launch of leaderboards.  Leaderboards show off the top players and added a new layer of competitiveness within the community.  Of course, students are always most interested in their own performance.  With that in mind we created diagnostics which provide students an initial ability estimate.  In addition to diagnostics, skill specific perfomance analytics were added to provide students with precise knowledge of their strengths and weaknesses.

Skill specific analytics opened the door for other features.  We were able to add custom games and custom review sessions so that students could focus their study time on areas of most need.   Games were also made adaptive to the students.  This was significant because it allowed us to show the questions to students based on their ability level that would benefit them most at that time.

Tutors were also introduced to the Grockit learning environment in 2009.  With this addition students are now able to study in the three ways they naturally study; alone, with peers, and experts.  Tutors were a welcome addition to the Grockit community and students will have more ways to study with them in the coming months.  Towards the end of the year we added more achievement badges to games.  Badges are symbolic rewards for accomplishments in Grockit. Students see them as a fun way to share their activity with friends.

Such progress would not be possible without the hard work of a talented team.  In fact, the Grockit team doubled in size this year and is up to 23 full-time employees.  Feel free to get to know us a little better from our Facebook office photos.

By the way, did I mention that 1.7 Million questions were answered in Grockit in 2009!  This activity level by our early users has been very encouraging.  And we’re thrilled to help them achieve their educational goals.

Now it’s time to look to the future and we’re excited to do so.  2010 will be a big year as we release Grockit 2.0 and expand beyond test prep into K-12 curriculum.  Stay tuned, the journey has just begun.

Happy New Year!

Diagnostic Linking Pattern (not to scale)

At Grockit we believe in collaborative learning and continual improvement. This is an ideal we encourage both in our users and in ourselves. Towards this end, we continually research and develop more exact methods for estimating question difficulty and student ability to enhance the Grockit experience.

Grockit diagnostics indicate current capability level for our users by capitalizing on the mathematical tools of item response theory. These are the same methods used by major testing companies to create computer adaptive tests (CAT) such as the GMAT.

Our capacity to estimate current capability for the individual depends upon the belief that if item A is more difficult than item B, item A should be more difficult than item B consistently across people.

Getting the item difficulty estimates was one of the early keys to providing better feedback for our members. Early on, this was a fairly arduous process because data from practice questions left us with a sparse data matrix that required many levels of data filtering to ensure reliable estimates. As an example of the filtering, people were only included in these calculations if they had both correct and incorrect responses to practice questions. We could not include data from those people because the information did not help us determine which questions are more or less difficult.

In addition to our desire to get away from the intensive filtering, we also wanted a way to get difficulty estimates for the new questions that we publish on a continuous basis.

Our new approach entails making our diagnostics dual purpose. Not only do the diagnostics serve to estimate members’ current capabilities, they also increase the accuracy of our estimation process. We have implemented a shifting diagnostic schedule in which certain questions serve as links from group to group, enabling us to place all of our data on the same metric. Newly published questions are also included so that every question on Grockit gets a difficulty estimate as soon as possible.

More importantly for our members, we already have solid difficulty estimates on enough diagnostic questions to generate the ability estimates necessary for targeted quests. With the new shifting diagnostic plan, we are now able to rapidly turn out new content with scientifically-based difficulties and experience points. Take a diagnostic on Grockit and see where you rank!