The Work.

Product Vision: A short-cycle assessment tool that uses student data to power personalized learning solutions — this product is named Ontos.

On average, teachers have more than 25 students per class. Each of those students has their own learning needs. Ontos not only shows what a student’s needs are, it highlights the strengths that teachers can leverage to foster their growth.

Together, we can create a personalized learning ecosystem that gives students and teachers the best resources at the right time, empowering them to thrive.

If an Ontos-powered hybrid ecosystem existed today, 34M students could benefit.

Since 2018, Tyton Partners has continually validated a shrinking TAM for assessment only and curriculum only solutions and a growing market for an assessment solution, integrated with a curriculum partner.

A conjoint Ontos pricing study found that 60% of the TAM will buy a hybrid ecosystem solution from a curriculum publisher.

Discovery & Delivery Process

After a short initial discovery effort collaborating closely with NWEA’s Research team, we began work on Delivering the Lab Platform and in-class Assessment products of Ontos. The Lab Platform allowed NWEA Researchers (and other third-party organizations) to create assessments based on a proprietary ontology and knowledge base driven by NWEA Map results as well as continued inputs from the Ontos system, school districts and machine learning. The in-class Assessment tool would be utilized by teachers and students in class to aid in more individualized and custom learning for students over time.

How we work & why it matters

We have cross-teamed between learning scientists, measurement scientists, engineers, and designers to create an instructionally relevant map of student knowledge development.

We move from nascent exploratory research to strongly confirmatory research in real classrooms to justify the claims of our assessments.

We iteratively design and test based on current students who help determine if there is meaning in our data.

An explicit model of cognition

The ontology represents an instructionally relevant model of how student thinking evolves as they learn.

Unlike content standards, which vary in grain-size and have no structure, the ontology’s value is its specificity of knowledge and how that knowledge is connected.

It makes explicit the essential knowledge critical for day-to-day learning and how that knowledge progresses, converges, and diverges.

The structure of the ontology

The ontology will drive our test design, personalization, reporting, and recommendations.

Because the ontology makes explicit how knowledge builds, it enables an asset-based approach that goes beyond identifying what students can’t do; Ontos identifies the knowledge students have to help prioritize interventions that will maximize their learning.