![]()
Who's Behind ASAP?
The Automated Student Assessment Prize (ASAP) intends to solve the longstanding problem of high cost and low turnaround of current testing deeper learning such as student essays. The goal is to shift testing away from standardized bubble tests to tests that evaluate critical thinking, problem solving and other 21st century skills.
The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation is the sponsor of the competition. The foundation appreciates the cooperation of the two testing consortia, PARCC and SBAC, in the development of this demonstration and competition.
ASAP was designed and constructed by a prize partnership between Open Education Solutions (OpenEd), The Common Pool, and Kaggle. Below are biographical sketches for the team:
The Automated Student Assessment Prize (ASAP) intends to solve the longstanding
problem of high cost and low turnaround of current testing deeper learning such
as student essays. The goal is to shift testing away from standardized bubble tests
to tests that evaluate critical thinking, problem solving and other 21st century
skills.
The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation is the sponsor of the competition. The
foundation appreciates the cooperation of the two testing consortia, PARCC and SBAC,
in the development of this demonstration and competition.
ASAP was designed and constructed by a prize partnership between Open Education
Solutions (OpenEd), The Common Pool, and Kaggle. Below are biographical sketches
for the team:
Tom Vander Ark is CEO of OpenEd and a partner in Learn Capital,
an education venture capital firm. He is author of Getting Smart: How Digital Learning
is Changing the World and founder of GettingSmart.com, a digital learning advocacy
firm. Previously he served as President of the X PRIZE Foundation, was the Executive
Director of Education for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and served as
a public school superintendent in Washington State. Tom is director of the International
Association for K-12 Online Learning (iNACOL) and several other nonprofits. Tom
graduated from the Colorado School of Mines. He received his M.B.A. in finance from
the University of Denver. He continues his education online.
Lynn Van Deventer is a project manager for OpenEd. Prior to this
competition, Lynn led strategy and community engagement projects for Seattle Public
Schools. Prior to her work in education, Lynn spent 15 years as a Program Manager
in the software and data management industry. Lynn earned a BA in English from the
University of Iowa.
Jaison Morgan is the Managing Principal of The Common Pool, a consulting
business, specialized in developing effective incentive models. Jaison offers more
than twelve years as a senior manager and innovator in developing new incentive
models. He has worked closely with foundations, corporate sponsors, and high net
worth individuals committed to breakthrough innovation. Most recently, he completed
an extensive engagement with a corporate client in Abu Dhabi, resulting in a new
platform and global campaign for recognizing scalable clean technology solutions.
Mr. Morgan completed his graduate studies at the University of Chicago and has lectured
on the subject of incentive driven innovation at the World Economic Forum and during
a regular series at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Dr. Mark Shermis, Dean of Education, University of Akron, is the
academic advisor for ASAP. Dr. Shermis is frequently cited expert on automated scoring
and co-author of Classroom Assessment in Action. Dr. Shermis has also held faculty
positions at the University of Florida, Florida International, IUPUI, and the University
of Texas. Shermis earned a B.A. in Developmental Psychology at the University of
Kansas, and a doctorate and master’s degree in educational psychology at the
University of Michigan.
Anthony Goldbloom is the founder and CEO of Kaggle. He assists
companies with framing modeling tasks as data prediction competitions, ensuring
that competitions reflect real-life projects. Before founding Kaggle, Anthony worked
in the macroeconomic modelling areas of the Reserve Bank of Australia and before
that the Australian Treasury. In these roles, Anthony was responsible for building
macroeconomic models, generating economic forecasts and simulating the impact of
changes in interest rates and fiscal policy on the Australian economy. Anthony holds
a first class honours degree in economics and econometrics from the University of
Melbourne and has published in The Economist magazine and the Australian Economic
Review.
Jeremy Howard is Kaggle's Chief Data Scientist. He worked as a
management consultant at McKinsey & Company and at AT Kearney for nine years
before founding FastMail.FM (an email provider), which he later sold to Opera Software,
and Optimal Decisions Group (an insurance pricing optimization specialist), which
he later sold to ChoicePoint. Jeremy regularly appears as an IT expert on television
shows such as Sunrise, Midday, Evening News and the Morning Show. He joined Kaggle
after prize-winning performances in a number of the site's early data prediction
competitions.
Ben Hamner is on Kaggle's data science team. After graduating from
Duke with degrees in Biomedial Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering,
and Mathematics he spent a year in Lausanne Switzerland at the EPFL as a Whitaker
Fellow. Here, he applied signal processing and machine learning to improve non-invasive
brain-computer interfaces with CNBI. Ben caught the data science bug, and has competed
in numerous machine learning contests. He won the 2010 ICDM Traffic Prediction contest
and Google Research's Semi-Supervised Feature Learning contest, and did very well
on several Kaggle competitions before joinging the team.