SOPHIA Partners With New Classrooms To Offer Customized Digital Content So Students Can Learn In Their Own Way

MINNEAPOLIS, Jan. 23, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- SOPHIA.org, the online education platform offering a unique Many Ways to Learn™ learning model with more than 28,000 free academic multimedia tutorials taught by a multitude of teachers, has partnered with New Classrooms – a nonprofit organization that gives students a targeted, individualized learning experience based on their unique learning needs – to provide a free resource for students focused on middle school math concepts.  Through this partnership, SOPHIA is offering New Classrooms branded learning pathways specifically designed to support its Teach to One: Math program.

"For too long, our education system has been focused on teaching to the group versus to the individual student," said Allison Gage, Senior Vice President at SOPHIA.  "New Classrooms shares our vision of providing individualized resources that target the unique needs of each and every learner, and we look forward to working together to provide additional resources that help students reach their full academic potential."

Through the partnership, SOPHIA has designed learning pathways – full course curriculums in math consisting of hundreds of bite-sized tutorials with multiple lessons provided on each concept, taught by a variety of teachers, offering students Many Ways to Learn. The tutorials feature an assortment of screencasts, images, video, audio podcasts and text that appeal to different learning styles. Students work at their own pace along a sequenced journey of tutorials and are quizzed along the way to determine mastery of each concept. All New Classrooms branded pathways are mapped to Teach to One: Math's curriculum standards, and tutorials are created and reviewed by teachers to ensure academic credibility. New Classrooms teachers can also access reports to monitor student progress.

In addition to providing New Classrooms learning pathways, Sophia has developed more than 214 sequenced pathways in Math and Science aligned to Common Core Standards, covering competencies typically covered in middle school, high school, and early college.

"We're excited to incorporate SOPHIA's engaging and innovative content into Teach to One: Math," said Joel Rose, New Classrooms' CEO and Co-founder. "Participating students will have on-demand access to SOPHIA lessons both during and outside of school hours in order to accelerate their learning."

In addition to the Many Ways learning model, SOPHIA.org also provides resources to help teachers flip their classrooms, a new method of teaching that is shifting the way teachers teach and students learn. SOPHIA also recently introduced SOPHIA Pathways for College Credit, which makes a college education affordable and accessible.

To learn more, visit www.sophia.org.

About SOPHIA
SOPHIA is a first-of-its-kind social education platform that offers students many ways to learn by making free, credible academic content available to anyone, anywhere, at anytime. The site offers more than 28,000 tutorials created by hundreds of teachers and experts taught in a variety of ways. The platform further enhances the learning process by offering quizzes, assessing learning preferences and providing learning paths that lead students from one topic to the next so students of all ages can learn the way they learn best. SOPHIA is owned by Capella Education Company. For more information, visit www.sophia.org.

About New Classrooms Teach to One: Math program
Teach to One: Math, developed by New Classrooms Innovation Partners, reimagines the classroom. It integrates a variety of instructional approaches — teacher-led instruction, student collaboration, software, and virtual instructors — to personalize instruction. Each student moves through a rich, individualized learning experience at his or her own pace. And teachers are able to leverage their time and expertise to better support student learning. Teach to One: Math currently serves about 3,500 students in Chicago, New York, and Washington, DC. New Classrooms' national funders include the Bezos Family Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Broad Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation, and NewSchools Venture Fund. For more information, visit: www.newclassrooms.org

Contact: Laura Telander Graf
             651.698.4006
             [email protected]

SOURCE SOPHIA