“More than 25 percent of people taking the GMAT in India already use Grockit to study”, Farb Nivi, Grockit

About Grockit

A collaborative and social learning platform that provides adaptive test prep and expert tutoring for students of all ages.

Social learning platform. Sounds interesting. How does Grockit work?

Grockit’s collaborative/social approach allows students to learn more from each other and serves to reinforce their learnings and share knowledge. Grockit improves the academic performance of students by applying the power of social networks, gaming mechanics and adaptive algorithms to the process of studying. Research has shown that small group study is the best form of instructional design, and Grockit makes this possible in a fun and social way. Students practice with other students in live chats via group study. Peers serve as a primary learning resource, and knowledge is reinforced when students teach each other what they know. Studying with peers is highly engaging and makes learning fun and effective. As students progress in Grockit, they collect badges, points and rewards for both learning and teaching, and are ranked on the Grockit leader board.

Founder’s Background

I am the founder and chief product officer of Grockit. Prior to Grockit, I served as an academic director at Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions where I managed the teachers and academic quality of Kaplan's Pre-College program. Before Kaplan, I was a Princeton Review master teacher, developing and publishing course curriculum and training teachers for the SAT, ACT, LSAT, GMAT, GRE and MCAT. In 2001, I was honored by The Princeton Review as National Teacher of the Year. I earned my bachelor’s in psychology from the University of Michigan. Roy Gilbert is Grockit’s CEO. Roy is responsible for the health and growth of the entire Grockit business, as well as maintaining and fostering the company’s celebrated culture and innovative environment. Prior to joining Grockit, Roy was the Director of User Operations and Policy for Google. Roy's 900-person global organization was responsible for all of Google's non-advertising operations, including search quality and spam-fighting, consumer and ads policy, localization and translation, book scanning, and product support. Prior to this, Roy launched and led Google's operations in India as part of Google's advertising sales team. Roy built from scratch a 1000-person organization which ran global sales and service for the long tail of the AdWords business. Before moving to India, Roy was the business operations manager for the launch of Gmail. Roy began his career as an officer in the United States Navy, where he served on-board the attack submarine USS MIAMI (SSN-755) as Sonar Officer and as a watch officer for several classified missions. Roy graduated with a BS in computer science from the US Naval Academy as well as an MBA from Stanford.

Which tests are supported by Grockit?

Grockit is a social platform for learning that improves the academic performance of students by applying the power of social networks, gaming mechanics and adaptive algorithms to the process of studying for grades 7-12 Mathematics and English Language Arts as well as exams such as the SAT, ACT, GRE, LSAT and GMAT. Grockit’s adaptive learning platform creates a personalized learning experience based on each user’s strengths, weaknesses and how they interact with material. Grockit’s chief learning architect, Ari Bader-Natal, experiments with new ways to use social software to motivate student engagement and collaboration, and actively incorporates ongoing work from related academic research fields so that Grockit’s learning platform can better support and adapt to each individual learner.

Plans for India

More than 25 percent of people taking the GMAT in India already use Grockit to study, answering 1.25 million study questions in the past year alone. Grockit’s Indian users have been vocal in their desire to have an easier local payment method. Of these users, about half of them are studying for the GMAT and the rest are split between the GRE, SAT and the Grockit Academy, which includes Math and Language Arts studying for grades 7 – 12. In May 2011, Grockit responded to the Indian market’s need for online test prep for American admissions tests with the launch of Rupee pricing, localized payment options and Indian marketing campaigns - we are currently in beta and are rolling to production very shortly.

Some interesting statistics about Grockit

Yes. We do have some interesting pointers to share. Grockit users, when studying together rather than studying alone spent 3x as much time solving problems per study session, solved more than twice as many problems per study session, were 10% more likely to answer questions correctly. 12% of the number of GMAT test-takers worldwide in 2010 studied for the GMAT on Grockit. 27% of the number of GMAT test-takers in India in 2010 studied for the GMAT on Grockit. 1 in 6 questions answered in Grockit groups involved international collaboration(16% of group game questions. 10% of all game questions). On a typical day, Grockit hosts 1,000 cross-national border interactions and its users span 150 countries. During the April of 2011, Grockit GMAT Premium users self reported an average improvement of 40 points between GMAT practice tests and actual GMAT test scores. We are growing at around 400 new users per day. 7,000,000 questions were answered on Grockit in the last year. Grockit users answer over 15,000 questions per day.

Check out Grockit’s website here https://grockit.com/ Please share your thoughts on this story by writing to us at [email protected]