When students struggle to do hard tasks like dividing fractions, teachers need to figure out whether the academic lesson is giving them trouble or if the problem lies somewhere else.
For example, perhaps the challenge with dividing fractions is the student’s working memory, which is key to mentally juggling information for multi-step problem-solving. Or it could be their verbal memory, the ability to remember what they read or heard from the teacher. A third possibility is their visual memory, which is important for remembering formulas, figures, pictures, and other information that isn’t based on language.
According to learning scientists, cognitive skills like these are the best predictors of academic outcomes. They explain more than half of the variability in student achievement.
A year of exhaustive research led them to partner with neuroscientists at the Brain Behavior Lab of the Perelman School of Medicine at University of Pennsylvania to develop an objective, evidence-based approach.
The end result is a straightforward learner profile, formatted to prioritize strengths before moving on to the areas where students would benefit from support. “We all have different strengths and needs,” Weinstein said. “Even your top students have just as many needs as everybody else.”
MindPrint is the only K-12 solution that uses objective cognitive data to teach students how they learn best and provides educators with strategies to tap into students' learning strengths and help build up their skills in weaker areas.
At the core of MindPrint is an hour-long online, self-administered cognitive assessment that focuses on how students learn rather than on what they have learned. Results are presented in a comprehensive student learning profile so families, educators, and students themselves understand what their strengths and needs are.
“Our customers describe MindPrint to us as the missing piece,” Weinstein said. “It is completely a game-changer for many students.”
Educators are always looking to make better-informed decisions about instruction, and MindPrint provides them with actionable, personalized data about:
Weinstein says seeing a student’s profile often leads to a-ha moments about classroom behaviors teachers may have observed but weren’t able to explain.
For instance, one South Carolina school found that many of its students struggled with verbal memory. Educators realized that was why students would blurt out “What are we supposed to do?” right after their teacher had finished explaining an activity in detail. It wasn’t that they weren’t listening—and instead of getting frustrated or avoiding giving verbal instructions altogether, MindPrint provided teachers with targeted strategies to help students develop their verbal memory skills.
Weinstein added that considering learner profiles alongside achievement data is particularly useful. For example, teachers often assign students to work in small groups according to proficiency level. “MindPrint can identify why a student is not proficient and which cognitive skill contributes to their success to determine the strategy they need to become proficient,” she said. “Teachers are better off putting a child who is at a mid-level with a child who is at a lower level but has the same learning strengths,” she explained. “They will both really benefit.”
On the other hand, “a student who learns best through visuals could become frustrated at being grouped with someone who is just talking and talking,” she added.
In addition to its cognitive lens, MindPrint also partnered with CAST, a nonprofit educational research, training, and policy firm, on a National Science Foundation grant centered on social-emotional learning. When information about students’ attributes such as self-awareness, self-management, and engagement is combined with achievement and cognitive data, teachers have even more information to meet each student where they are and guide them to where they need to be.
MindPrint profiles are shared with students not as a stand-alone but with plenty of support—everything from how-to videos to action-oriented bullet lists to checklists that can be used during homework—so when learning is hard, students will be equipped with a range of strategies.
There is also a BOOST course that gives general guidance as well as focused strategies for math and reading. “At the end of the course, we can show that students are making gains in self-efficacy and growth mindset, which are leading indicators of growth and achievement,” Weinstein said.
And because MindPrint is designed to honor the differences in how we all learn, Weinstein said, students develop empathy for one another. The approach can send positive ripples throughout a learning community. “Teachers have told us they rediscover why they got into teaching in the first place.”
Otus recently acquired MindPrint, which marks an exciting advance for both students and teachers. “Educators have insights into how students might be struggling and what they need—but without being able to integrate it into what is really going on in their life on a day-to-day basis, they’re missing a piece,” Weinstein said.
When Weinstein was looking for a platform to help teachers and schools consolidate the data and determine how to utilize it in their classrooms, Otus was a natural choice.
Utility is another benefit. For instance, although teachers appreciate having a view into each student’s cognitive strengths and needs, the amount of variability within their classes can make it difficult to design instruction and assign groups. “The merger with Otus makes perfect sense because it can take all the data and create groups for teachers,” Weinstein said.
“With a one-hour assessment, you can scoop up the 10% of students who are underperforming their potential and raise their scores,” she continued. “That is a benchmark that matters, because scores are how schools are graded and what parents are looking to see how their child is doing.”
Once the students understand the “why” behind improving skills like attention and abstract reasoning, they respond positively, Weinstein said. “One hour can change kids’ lives.”