Will IXL replace the textbook? 
Teachers, parents, and administrators are all stakeholders in Math education and endeavour to provide the absolute best educational opportunities possible for K-12 students given finite resources available. The growing number of connected devices found in our classrooms today has caused an explosion of Math related educational technology available to teachers and students. With trends continuing to develop toward personalized, adaptive and active learning environment, educational stakeholders are transitioning investments away from traditional resources that promote a one-shoe-fits-all approach to math education and into resources that that promote adaptive educational environments. It comes as no surprise that many schools are shelving antiquated math textbooks and opting for subscription-based, adaptive, online educational technologies such as Khan Academy, IXL, Mathletics and Whizz Education. There has never been a more exciting time to participate in the computational ed-tech market
This report will attempt to provide a critical review of IXL as a viable replacement to typical textbooks used in the high school mathematics classroom. The report will inform prospective investors in this venture by analyzing both strengths and concerns associated with this technology and objectively evaluate IXL strategic position within the ever evolving ed-tech market. I will draw upon my 10 years of experience teaching math courses ranging from Math 6 to Calculus in order to provide authentic context to the strengths and concerns associated with IXL.
Product overview: What is IXL?
IXL is a computational learning environment designed to support pre-K to grade 12 instruction in content areas such as math, language arts and science. This report will focus primarily on IXL math which covers over 3800 topics ranging from counting, addition and subtraction to more rigorous topics such as geometry and calculus. Students are presented with questions generated by a sophisticated algorithm that ensures that students never see the same question twice and have access to an infinite number of questions to practice. The propriety SmartScore algorithm differentiates the learning experience for each student and generates interactive problems based on the student’s understanding of the material. Students are provided immediate feedback and question-specific explanations in order to support self-paced adaptive learning. Larger skills are broken down into scaffolded MircroSkills which serve as building blocks to guide students toward numeric fluency.
This report will audit the venture potential of IXL math across six dimensions, or facets. Please click to on each dimension to find out more!