Becoming a Sophisticated Learner

Misconceptions about teaching and learning based on intuition have led to an epidemic of disengagement in schools (Evans, 2023), higher education (Chronicle of Higher Ed, 2022; NY Times, 2022), and the workplace (Society for HR Management, 2023). Additionally, a global crisis is emerging of learners of all ages being unprepared for future employment and prosperity (UNICEF, 2022), increasing achievement and opportunity gaps (UNESCO, 2023) with “uneducated, uninspired, and unskilled” learners (UNICEF, 2022).

We aim to provide a solution directly to consumers that democratizes access to optimal learning based on science and evidence-based strategies, through our innovative online program, Becoming a Sophisticated Learner (BSL). Our goal is to democratize access to quality instruction on learning for any adult anywhere.

The amount and complexity of information we are processing every day has increased dramatically during this fourth industrial revolution. This leaves too many adults unprepared because they were never taught how to process information effectively and today lifelong learning is a common survival skill. At the core of our educational system there are several persistent challenges:

1. The current approach to teaching is often disconnected from how students learn and causes too many students to drop-out, struggle, and/or work too hard to do well.. This in turn inhibits interest and careers in STEM, which are often perceived to be “too hard” by students or “for smart kids” (Hynes, 2014). As a result, student engagement decreases steadily from elementary school through high school (Gallup, 2023), impacting students’ ability to succeed academically.

2. Learning is a scientific process, and for students to learn optimally they must be taught (Bjork et al., 2013: Dunlosky 2021). This is true regardless of cognitive abilities and disposition towards learning. Students often use ineffective techniques such as highlighting and re-reading, with limited success. Such strategies are rooted in the misconception about learning (Bjork & Bjork, 2011).

3. Colleges inherit too many students who were never trained to learn causing an unnecessarily high drop-out rate globally, while they simultaneously produce too few graduates who possess the skills needed in an increasingly complex labor market. The majority of adults enter college or the workforce without an understanding of how to learn. The World Economic Forum estimates that half of the global workforce will need reskilling by 2025. Furthermore, unemployment and underemployment coexists with 1 million STEM jobs expected to remain unfilled (OECD; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2023).

The need is clear and the gap is one we can fill with Becoming a Sophisticated Learner. Regardless of where adults are in their academic formation or career journey, the program teaches adult learners how to become effective, self-directed, lifelong learners.

Becoming a Sophisticated Learner (BSL) is an online program that builds science of learning-based strategies and establishes the mindsets and habits of mind needed to be successful learners, which is relevant to school, careers and life in general. 

The program consists of 6 learning modules that are carefully designed to be impactful, engaging, and easily accessible. The modules are hosted in Canvas (learning management system) and incorporate third-party tools including Padlet, Quizlet, Flip, EdPuzzle, and peerScholar. The design of the modules is informed by learning science. This is important because it ensures that learners are able to flexibly use evidence-based strategies to achieve academic goals, meet upskilling and reskilling targets, and master any topic of interest.

The How: The instructional design includes 8 program elements that ensure learning including storytelling, priming activities (which prepare the brain for learning), video-micro lessons, creativity, retrieval practice, application guides (study aids), reflection opportunities, and collaborative learning. To serve all learners, there are multiple accessibility features including speech to text, closed captions, transcripts, additional prompts and examples for learners who might require additional support, and opportunities to extend learning for learners who would benefit. In addition, the program’s mode of implementation has been studied and carefully crafted. It is delivered in a blended learning environment where synchronous support  and community is a critical element. This is achieved through virtual collaboration including chat and virtual coaching.

The What: The beginning of the program builds a strong foundation for learning. This includes step-by-step instruction on how to form productive habits and extinguish unproductive habits. In addition, it includes a guided reflective analysis of past learning experiences which ultimately dispels 10+ myths and misconceptions learners may hold about learning. Learners are taught neuroplasticity, the flow state, and the close relationship between emotions and learning. The program then shifts its focus to equipping learners with strategies for learning that can be used to master any topic of interest for formal, informal, or workplace learning. First, learners are taught the architecture of human memory including 8 proven encoding techniques and 4 retrieval strategies. Then, they learn 13 executive function skills for before, during, and after learning. Last, learners develop their metacognition in order to monitor and control their learning process.

BSL serves three populations: post-secondary students, independent adult learners (to up-skill, re-skill, or simply achieve a learning goal), and parents (to support their children’s learning).

These learners have been underserved by traditional schooling which involves instructional approaches, unconducive to learning (Bjork et al, 2018) and led by teachers whose suboptimal training (Dunlosky et al, 2021) has lacked science-based approaches on how we learn (COGx, 2023). Learners graduate unprepared for the global workforce, without lifelong learning competencies to acquire evolving skills and knowledge to compete in an increasingly complex labor force (Harris Poll, 2024).

For example, 56% of global business leaders (N=3800) agree that “schools will need to teach how to learn rather than what to learn to prepare students for jobs that don’t yet exist” (Dell, 2018). Meanwhile, 70% of adults feel unprepared for the future of work, and 80% state that they lack the skills necessary to advance their careers (Amazon Workplace Intelligence, 2022). 

The Becoming a Sophisticated Learner (BSL) online modules directly teach participants how to learn and offer opportunities and engagement to apply science-based strategies. We posit that with a solid foundation of how learning happens along with evidence-informed strategies to learn optimally, adult learners will develop preparedness for learning, upskilling, and adapting to a changing learning and employment landscape. 

Of the learners who are preparing for or are already enrolled in higher education, there are two particular high need groups, underserved and first-generation populations. Learners of lower socioeconomic status (SES) demonstrate less academic achievement than their peers (NAEP, 2019) and tend to receive less effective instruction (Max & Glazerman, 2014). In addition, they experience greater levels of stress, lower access to language resources and cognitive stimulation, all of which affect brain development (Brito & Nobel, 2014). BSL empowers underserved learners with learning strategies that can combat learning loss and deficits in knowledge.

Similarly, Learners whose parents have not attended college are less likely to complete a degree (NCES, 2011) and more likely to exit after the first year of schooling (Center for First-Generation Success, 2021). This creates a clear economic advantage in income and wealth for continuing-education learners in comparison to their first-generation counterparts (Pew Research Center, 2019 & 2021). 

By democratizing access to BSL so individuals can enroll directly (without relying on a COGx partner organization as we’ve relied on until now), we hope to propel first-generation college learners forward with techniques for learning to make the transition to college fruitful and seamless as well as parents wishing to help their children learn more effectively; or adults eager to process information more effectively and efficiently.

COGx was founded by Javier Arguello. Prior to earning graduate degrees from Yale and Harvard, Javier was a dropout of Montgomery College, a community college in the suburbs of Washington DC. After earning a 1.6 G.P.A. in his first semester at Montgomery College Javier felt the diagnosis he had received at the age of 13, when he was told he was “mildly retarded”, was most certainly accurate.  The struggles in school were the direct result of the turmoil endured after a revolution in his native Nicaragua, during which his family barely escaped assassination attempts and lost all of their belongings when migrating to the United States. Javier skipped part of 8th grade to enroll into High School at an elite private school that his family could not afford at the time. He became a 13 year old janitor to pay for his education and the struggle adjusting to the language, culture of the school and adverse family circumstances, led to the destabilizing and self fulfilling diagnosis.  Sadly, there are millions of students eager to learn but derailed by adversity and/or a lack of support (inclusive of educational malpractice) around the world. The common thread is students who are never afforded an opportunity to understand or master learning, inclusive of tools to self-regulate and/or improve habits of mind. In the US alone, the majority of students enrolling in college are first generation students, putting more pressure on a system that already produces more dropouts than graduates. 

Javier realized that there was a desperate need to democratize access to cognitive science in a way that was accessible and application-based, in order to empower learners to succeed. Javier reached out to global leaders in learning science to begin distilling research and to leading practitioners to translate research into programs that could be applied with ease in the real world (https://cogx.info/about/academic-partners/). COGx combines collaborations with the world’s leading academics with a global team of professionals that have helped contextualize and/or translate programs into Spanish and Arabic as we form strategic partnerships in various geographies.  We hire globally, particularly in the global south, to serve a global need in a way that respects and embraces the local environments we operate in.

Our programs have been proven to be effective because of our approach and the commitment of our diverse team based in Syria, India, Argentina, Costa Rica, Canada and the US. We have been recognized as the world’s leading solution translating the science of learning into effective programs that enhance teaching and learning in the US (LatinX), Middle East (Dubai Future Foundation), and globally (QS/Wharton Reimagine Education Awards). We are now aiming to make programs available directly to learners instead of available through partner organizations, as we’ve operated. Through the MIT Solve grant we hope to obtain support to succeed in this endeavor, critical to our mission of democratizing access to the science of learning through technology.

We have significant expertise developing programs that demonstrate meaningful gains improving learning ability and/or teaching students to learn optimally, which we’ve demonstrated clinically and through academic evaluations of our interventions. 

Over the past decade we have worked closely with some of the world’s most renowned experts on the Science of Learning. Some of our academic partners and collaborators include University of Toronto Professor Steve Joordens; University of Melbourne Professor John Hattie; James Madison University Professor David Daniels; Stanford University Professor Linda Darling Hamond; UCLA Professors Robert Bjork & Elizabeth Bjork (who are among the world’s most cited in learning science). COGx staff worked closely with Professors Robert & Elizabeth Bjork and their staff at the Bjork Learning & Forgetting Lab to help us ensure the efficacy and impact of our programs as well as to help us design the rubric for measuring impact. In our first iterations of the student program, we identified that after completing our program student’s obtained a gain that was equivalent to more than one year of schooling, as determined through improvements in their self-regulation, mastery of learning and gains in their metacognitive awareness.

We initially developed the student online program to complement student interventions at partner schools who adopted COGx programs to improve their students' learning ability. These programs were successful but complementary to in-person programs. We leveraged our experience improving learning ability to further develop the online program to be stand-alone, but still distributed this through partner organizations. 

Starting in 2021, we began the development of three versions of the program Becoming a Sophisticated Learner (middle school, high school and college-level students). We introduced these programs in 2022 through COGx partner organizations gradually and by 2024 we have delivered these programs with success through partner schools/colleges in the United States, Canada, Colombia, Ukraine,  South Africa, Argentina, and Jordan allowing us to reach thousands of students through educators we train and support to deliver the programs in their institutions. We’ve tested, perfected and proven that we have a program that is effective and needed in the marketplace, but realize that we limit access/scalability if we only offer it through partner organizations. Therefore, the next phase is to democratize access by being able to go directly to adult learners.

We are looking to democratize our solution by not only serving the millions of students who are never taught how to learn in school or college but by also allowing individuals (adult learners) to enroll and benefit from these programs. 

This is of great importance globally given the fact that lifelong learning is not a luxury but a survival skill for our shared prosperity as numerous reports and studies consistently reveal (Unesco, 2023; Dell, 2018; Korn-Ferry, 2024; ETS/Harris Poll, 2024; World Economic Forum, 2023). Half of the world’s workforce needs to upskill/reskill by 2025 and we are on track for a global shortage of 85 million unmet jobs by 2030, which is projected to subtract US$8.5 trillion from our global economy. 

We have succeeded in developing world class solutions and proven their efficacy. However, we face barriers to scaling our solution for direct access to learners globally, which is new to our operating model (partnership-based approach). We have a substantial network of educators, however we know we can reach more and democratize our solution with funding and other forms of support, particularly by learning how to successfully reach learners directly to enroll in our programs.

Through this grant, we aim to become more visible and identify strategic partners for adopting our programs globally while also constantly finding ways to improve our delivery and impact through networking, monitoring and evaluation, mentoring support and investment.

Becoming a Sophisticated Learner (BSL) delivers the learning science and evidence-based strategies directly to adult learners. Furthermore, it equips them with the ability to transfer this knowledge to their schoolwork or profession. At the moment, there isn’t a course or degree available that includes the full breadth and depth of the science of learning. There is a clear need for a single place for adult learners to understand how they learn and strategies to learn effectively and efficiently in a systematic manner. The systematic approach, another unique element to BSL, ensures that students are able to apply this information to learning any information in any class and any career. This is achieved by applying principles of learning science to the instructional design.

1. Unlike a MOOC, our program is actively led by expert facilitators who answer questions and lead synchronous sessions to provide support.

2. Peer-based learning is fostered through a proprietary tech platform, designed by cognitive scientists, to foster anonymized feedback, collaboration, communication and reflection. 

3. Community is also built with other learners on discussion boards and during live classes. Participants learn from other people’s educational trajectories and share their own prior experiences.

4. Priming quizzes and open- ended interrogatories are used to get learners to think about the subject matter they are about to learn. 

5. Formative assessments prompt reflection and metacognitive awareness.  

6. Content is multimodal and adheres to cognitive theory of multimedia learning. 

7. Micro video lessons leverage dual coding techniques and make the information tangible and relevant.

8. Learners are engaged through a variety of tech tools to submit their work, including writing and video.

9. We introduce activities that rely on retrieval strategies throughout the program to not only teach the concept but have learners experience the efficacy of the strategy first hand. Participants learn how to develop habits of mind alongside effective study strategies with ease.

10. Furthermore, the program contains application guides that distill the core concepts they learned and provide examples and scenarios of how to use the strategies and techniques in various contexts. Participants can print them out or store them on their computer for easy reference. 

11. Metacognitive awareness and reflection activities help learners make meaning of what they're learning and internalize the behaviors needed to sustain change and deploy optimal learning strategies.

BSL has the potential to improve higher education and career outcomes for adult learners at a large scale as it is easily implementable and a consistent experience that is not influenced by the natural variability of resources, instructor, or dependence of schools as the mode of delivery. 

COGx aims to leverage its experience, programs and technology to expand and democratize access to quality, meaningful, applied learning experiences about and based on the science of learning.

COGx, through its innovative online program Becoming a Sophisticated Learner (BSL), provides applied, impactful teaching and learning experiences to adult learners based on the science of learning. BSL instruction, grounded in the learning sciences, provides learners with  concrete examples, micro-lectures from experts, application activities that engage learners in the strategies they’re learning about, and assessments that raise metacognitive awareness of the learning process. To elaborate, BSL will enable learners who complete the online modules and apply their learning through participation in interactive activities to develop greater knowledge and use of effective learning and studying behaviors. Examples of learning and study behaviors include: planning ahead, practicing retrieval on their own, reflecting on their performance, deliberate practice, and consciously moderating (supervising) their own learning (metacognition). 

Our immediate goals are to displace learners’ misconceptions about learning with a science-based knowledge and skills set, including metacognitive awareness and increased self-efficacy in learning new and difficult content and skills. Research suggests that individuals who have increased metacognitive awareness and knowledge of how they learn are more self-regulated in their learning (Dent & Koenka, 2016), have greater working memory (Geary, 2011), and experience greater self-efficacy (Schunk, 1990).

These goals link to our medial outcomes of increasing the application of the science of learning by BSL learners as well as their students, children, etc.  Our long term outcomes are to empower learners with increased efficacy to learn new information and persist toward their goals (e.g., for upskilling, reskilling, training, or pursuing academic degrees and other qualifications) and with greater confidence and tools to respond to change, seize opportunities, and persevere on challenging and tasks regardless of where they are in their academic formation or career journey.

Becoming a Sophisticated Learner is delivered through an LMS (Canvas) and incorporates the scientific principles of human learning in its instructional design through a mix of seven other technology platforms. Learning is active, engaging, collaborative, and application-based. These principles include pre-teaching terms, priming, retrieval practice, and dual coding

Pre-Teaching Terms: Mayer’s Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning teaches that students learn better when the terms are introduced in advance of the content. This helps avoid cognitive overload, which occurs when new content is paired with new terms that prevent the learner from effectively grasping both simultaneously. The program teaches vocabulary up front to avoid cognitive overload.

Priming Activities: While tests are commonly used to measure performance, they are also powerful tools to foster learning. Testing before we even teach the material helps students learn it better because it signals to their brains what is important and forthcoming. The program utilizes priming quizzes to encourage learners to think about information they’re about to learn.

Retrieval Practice: We begin forgetting what we've learned shortly after we learn it. The forgetting curve illustrates how learned information decays when we fail to proactively retrieve information. We use retrieval practice to foster reliable and durable learning. Retrieval practice is pulling a stored memory out of long-term memory into working memory for continued processing and use. The program incorporates four types of retrieval practice including elaboration, spacing, interleaving and self-testing.

Dual-Coding: When multimedia is used properly to adhere to a series of cognitive principles, learning is enhanced. Just as easily, learning can be hindered when we violate these principles. When images are linked to a word it is easier to remember and vice versa. This is called dual-coding. The program incorporates dual-coding throughout.

Becoming a Sophisticated Learner is delivered through an LMS (Canvas) and incorporates the scientific principles of human learning in its instructional design through a mix of seven other technology platforms. Learning is active, engaging, collaborative, and application-based. These principles include pre-teaching terms, priming, retrieval practice, and dual coding

Pre-Teaching Terms: Mayer’s Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning teaches that students learn better when the terms are introduced in advance of the content. This helps avoid cognitive overload, which occurs when new content is paired with new terms that prevent the learner from effectively grasping both simultaneously. The program teaches vocabulary up front to avoid cognitive overload.

Priming Activities: While tests are commonly used to measure performance, they are also powerful tools to foster learning. Testing before we even teach the material helps students learn it better because it signals to their brains what is important and forthcoming. The program utilizes priming quizzes to encourage learners to think about information they’re about to learn.

Retrieval Practice: We begin forgetting what we've learned shortly after we learn it. The forgetting curve illustrates how learned information decays when we fail to proactively retrieve information. We use retrieval practice to foster reliable and durable learning. Retrieval practice is pulling a stored memory out of long-term memory into working memory for continued processing and use. The program incorporates four types of retrieval practice including elaboration, spacing, interleaving and self-testing.

Dual-Coding: When multimedia is used properly to adhere to a series of cognitive principles, learning is enhanced. Just as easily, learning can be hindered when we violate these principles. When images are linked to a word it is easier to remember and vice versa. This is called dual-coding. The program incorporates dual-coding throughout.

Lastly, COGx has a proprietary iOs app that it is in the process of updating with AI functionality in order to provide learners ongoing access to content, strategies and techniques that promote better learning.

We have a total of 14 team members who work from various countries, including India, Argentina, Costa Rica, England, the United States and Canada.

Our research and translation efforts began in 2010, which led to the development of proprietary programs that were able to target and enhance learning ability, through customized in-person programs. We developed technology to make these programs accessible through licensing agreements but continued to seek ways to further democratize our solutions. We began developing the online platform to democratize access to the science of learning for educators in late 2019, introducing the first version of our educator programs in late 2020 and began developing the student program in 2021.

Our team is mostly female (80% or so) and about 2/3 of our staff are hispanic/people of color. Furthermore, we also aim to recruit from within the markets we serve in order to successfully contextualize our programs. This has allowed us to develop programs in Arabic, English and Spanish and reach 19 countries while remaining active in research and development. We collaborate with academics who tend to be globally renowned experts on human learning while also developing a partnership with UNESCO to better serve the global south and further integrate experts from developing countries into our efforts.

Because our mission is to democratize access to the science of learning through technology, our primary focus has been to lower costs without diluting the proven impact of our programs. 

Our programs for school leaders, students and educators are offered to ministries of education, public school systems/districts and independent private schools. Given the variety in scale each of these represents, we modify our operating model to serve their needs.

1. We serve independent schools through school associations (i.e. EARCOS in Asia, AMISA/Tri-Association in Latin America, etc.)  in order to extend to them similar cost savings of a larger organization. To reach lower income students in emerging markets we aim to work with partners, such as a Foundation, who can adopt and replicate our standards by becoming a center of excellence. This allows them to extend our programs to their beneficiaries at the lowest cost possible. An example of this would be our evolving partnership with Birla Foundation in India.

2. We serve public school districts primarily through word of mouth and/or because we are recommended to them by organizations we are affiliated to and they are ready to embrace change in order to align teaching with learning. One example of this is public schools embracing learner-centered approaches and/or competency/skill-based teaching or mastery. The Mastery Transcript Consortium represents approximately 400 schools and they endorse COGx as the path to changing teaching in order to achieve mastery and develop the skills students need to learn effectively. 

3. We serve ministries of education who are aiming to transform their system to one that embraces learning science. We have worked with Uruguay to help them transform their educational system and been selected as their partner for introducing cognitive science to teachers in training and in service, after carefully being audited by their national association of cognitive scientists and successfully running pilots for over a year. In addition, we’ve worked with the Ministry of Education in Jordan to partner in their ongoing efforts to transform their educational system to one that embraces learning science as well, which aligns well with their strategic priorities. 

Lastly, we have ongoing conversations with the World Bank and the Inter American Development Bank Education Departments to share insights on our programs/outcomes and ongoing research and align funding to programs that deliver quality professional development and impact aligned with their strategic objectives for grant recipients.

COGx generates revenue primarily through partner organizations that adopt COGx programs. In addition, we earn revenue through, speaking engagements, in-person programs that complement our online offerings, and grants. Thus far, we have not sought investment capital, so we remain privately held and self-funded. We may be raising capital to accelerate the adoption of our programs in strategic markets / segments.