WGU Labs Invests in Developer of Digital Learning Tools and Support
Argos Education will provide educators and learning designers more direct control over development of engaging digital courses
SALT LAKE CITY – Accelerator at WGU Labs, an affiliate of online nonprofit Western Governors University, today announced an investment in and strategic partnership with Argos Education, a company developing a highly customizable, educator-friendly digital learning platform that help create, deliver, analyze, and improve engaging learning experiences for students.
While the use of digital courseware recently soared—more than half of universities now use these tools, according to a recent Digital Learning Pulse survey—today’s e-learning tools are often hampered by inflexible designs and steep user learning curves, which render the tools less valuable for instructors. Argos Education aims to remedy these issues by democratizing content and allowing educators and course designers to create seamless, end-to-end, intentionally designed learning journeys.
Argos Education’s new adaptive learning platform, dubbed “Sojourner,” is built on the next generation of Carnegie Mellon University’s open-source software, the Open Learning Initiative. Access to Sojourner is free for educators, designers, and other creators to adopt and craft courses, and provides a new marketplace that allows educators and institutions to sell, purchase, and adapt previously designed courses, lesson modules, and other tools.
“Educators and institutions are increasingly building digital learning content to meet the learning needs of their students,” said Curtiss Barnes, co-founder and CEO of Argos. “Existing tools and content are cumbersome to use and/or put serious limitations on the types of courses institutions, faculty, and their instructional support teams can build—and how fast they can improve them. The Argos team is thrilled to partner with Accelerator at WGU Labs because we share core values about large scale impact on education and learner success. Furthermore, the WGU alignment validates what we are trying to do. The Accelerator is going to be rocket fuel for us.”
Under the partnership, the Accelerator will test Argos in new environments to identify common points of success and potential areas of improvement. The Accelerator will also support Argos’ go-to-market strategy.
“The time is right for educators to have access to reimagined tools like Argos Education’s Sojourner platform” said Kelvin Bentley, Senior Consultant of Accelerator at WGU Labs. “Argos Education represents the type of innovative partner that we feel has the potential to create a fundamentally new economy for how digital learning experiences are created, shared, and scaled for impact.”
“As a company with deep roots in academic values, Argos is delighted to have an accelerator affiliated with such a ground-breaking access-oriented university among our early investors,” said Michael Feldstein, co-founder and Chief Innovation Officer of Argos. “They understand our mission and they immediately understood how we’re thinking about the complex challenges that educators and educational institutions take on every day. That validation is incredibly important to us as we chase a big idea.”
Argos marks the fourteenth partnership for the Accelerator at WGU Labs since its inception. To learn more about the Accelerator and its partners, visit wgulabs.org/accelerator.
About WGU Labs
WGU Labs is a nonprofit affiliate of WGU. Accelerator at WGU Labs provides research, market development, and product enhancement services to early-stage education businesses. Through these services as well as financial investments, the Accelerator advances the scale and impact of education companies that share its mission to increase student access, lower student costs, and improve student outcomes. Learn more about WGU Labs and the Accelerator at wgulabs.org/accelerator. Follow WGU Labs on Twitter and LinkedIn.
About Argos
Argos Education’s purpose is to give control of the complete curricular experience back to educators. Sojourner, our easy-to-use courseware platform, empowers content creators to build high-quality digital learning experiences. Its intuitive AI-powered design process puts pedagogy first, which makes designing high-quality, effective courseware faster and easier. Academics and their institutions can create their own products to sell, adopt products that others have made, or both. Instructors who adopt courseware products that were made by others can easily customize them to meet their students’ needs. Learn more about Argos at argos.education. Follow Argos Education on LinkedIn and Twitter.
