Close Menu

UWI Team among winners in Global Innovative Educational Tools Competition

The Learning Engineering Tools Competition recently announced 30 teams that won a share of nearly $4 million after a global search for promising new education ideas, technologies and platforms. This year, more than 800 teams from 60 countries competed for this rigorous competition. The proposals sought to accelerate literacy and math skills for K-12 students, transform assessments in cost and quality, facilitate faster, better, and cheaper learning science research, and improve adult learning to boost middle class wages. The educational tools developed by the winning teams have the potential to impact over 4 million students by the end of 2022 and more than 40 million students within the next three years, according to estimates calculated by each team.

The winning teams include entrepreneurs, learning scientists, educators, and researchers from around the world, including the CARiLIT team from The UWI, led by Dr. Andre Coy (Department of Physics, Mona) and Dr. Phaedra S. Mohammed (Department of Computing & Information Technology, St. Augustine); other members of the team include, Dr. Paulson Skerrit (School of Education, St. Augustine), Dr. Yewande Lewis-Fokum (School of Education, Mona) and Mr. Asad Mohammed (Department of Mathematics and Statistics, St. Augustine). The team’s winning idea "BRIGHT START" is a tool for bridging reading instruction gaps through the use of a speech technology-enabled autonomous reading tutor. The solution aims to increase the number of young children that are reading before the age of 10 by supplementing current reading instruction and providing targeted attention and feedback to children who are underserved due to large class sizes and difficult socioeconomic circumstances.

The global competition is supported by several global NGOs including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and was administered by Georgia State University and The Learning Agency. Congrats CARiLIT!

Find out more about the competition and the winners, including CARiLIT: https://toolscompetition.org/winners-2021-competition

Published on 09 Sep, 2022

Top of Page