Company Overview

SMALLab is a learning company that started as a research project at Arizona State University with a goal of creating a transformational learning environment for K-12 education. We were supported by funding from the National Science Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, and Intel Research. The result of years of research performed by teams of educators, cognitive scientists, and engineers is an 86% increase in student understanding, a 6.7X increase in student to student collaboration, and a 33% increase in teacher performance. These teaching and learning impacts is the key difference between SMALLab and many other education technologies on the market today. 

Why SMALLab?

Educators and cognitive scientists know that nearly all of our learning experiences are grounded in the body and that when we engage the whole child and integrate collaboration with their classmates great learning gains are achieved. As more screens enter the classroom and students arrive at school conditioned for this type of experience kinesthetically and collaboratively engaging students is more challenging than ever before. SMALLab is the only learning company that solves this growing problem by providing a room sized lab where students move in 3D space during the lesson while interacting with software that is built to require the whole class to collaborate to be successful. It is common to hear students say "I learned about the content in class but I didn't understand it until we worked on it in SMALLab as a group". To see examples of students in SMALLab check out our video gallery!

Who Created SMALLab?

SMALLab was developed by educators for educators over a period of several years by an interdisciplinary team of dedicated faculty and graduate students at Arizona State University’s School of Arts, Media and Engineering. SMALLab is a product of the collaborative vision of these designers, educators, researchers, artists, engineers, computer scientists, psychologists, musicians, and dancers.

Inventor and Co-Inventors:

David Birchfield (Lead), Mina Johnson-Glenberg, Colleen Megowan, Ellen Campana, Kelly Phillips, Loren Olson, Gang Qian, Christopher Martinez, Lisa Tolentino, Sarah Hatton

Contributors:

Wilhelmina Savenye, Aisling Kelliher, Harvey Thornburg, Assegid Kidane, Thomas Ciufo, Aaron Cuthbertson, Huan Jin, Gary Minyard, Philippos Savvides, Andreea Danielescu, Tatyana Koziupa, David Lorig