Rick Kubina, a Penn State professor specializing in the science of individual measurement and performance/learning improvement, has done it all. He has conducted research, mentored students, published papers and books on the science of graphical display and powerful performance change methods.

For someone so heavily involved and informed on this specified schooling of science, having him plainly explain Chartlytics seemed like it might be a daunting task. Chartlytics is the application he cofounded of the Standard Celeration Chart that allows users to quantify important aspects of performance and learning.

His response turned out to be straightforward:

“Chartlytics is a software platform that rapidly changes performance and accelerates learning. Chartlytics can work with any curriculum, skill or teaching approach. Presently, Chartlytics is deployed in general and special education classrooms. Students monitor their own performance data and make changes or continual decisions with their teachers.”

Simple enough. By utilizing a tablet’s interface to run the software, students are able to work with teachers to identify behaviors, measure progress and communicate results quickly and clearly, while continually disseminating effective strategies.

Beyond all of the tangible tasks Chartlytics makes possible, Kubina recognizes a gap in the competition where he excels at what other companies lack.

“Many EdTech companies focus on providing accessibility to education,” he said. “However, EdTech companies lack two fundamental ingredients: 1) universal for all extraordinary performance stories – intensive practice and 2) equally intensive performance data monitoring. We aim to change the educational landscape by promoting meaningful change for each individual. Each student has their targeted performance pinpointed, measured with precise metrics and then shown on a special visual display that functions as the EKG of learning.”

They even have secondary statistical evidence to support their products primarily statistical evidence, as Kubina asserts, “Chartlytics offers learning changes in the range of 2x to 10x, depending on its implementation.”

Always exploring expansion in terms of providing easier accessibility to a wider audience, Chartlytics has recently partnered with Intermediate Unit 1, a regional educational agency that provides educational support to students, parents, educators, school administrators and the communities throughout southwestern Pennsylvania. Through this partnership, more than 50 classrooms will be accelerating their reading and math skills this semester through focused practice, personalized data analysis and student self-monitoring.

Another recent development for this brand based in Innovation Park is their pairing with iAchieve, an add-on product for use in Special Education Classrooms, grades K through 8. iAchieve incorporates evidence-based research on gamification (the application of typical elements of game playing to education to encourage engagement with course material), provides students ownership of their progress for their own Individualized Education Program, and implements real-time data to further enhance targeted skill or behavioral growth.

Whether you believe contemporary culture relies too heavily on supportive-technologies to function as a society on a day-to-day basis, or cringe at the thought of an electronic graphical display taking precedence in the classroom over a paper page, it’s hard to argue with progressive results, especially when supported by the data.

After all, the world as a whole is becoming a data-driven place, so perhaps our places of learning should be no different?