Everfi’s new cash will further improve access to education

Learning methods are an emerging area of scientific inquiry in the 21st century. To raise a new generation of informed citizens and trained employees, efficient, innovative solutions must be developed.

EverFi is a technology-based learning platform that recently received $190 million — one of the largest venture capital investments the D.C. region.

EverFi takes advantage of concepts in video games, “gamification” and adaptive learning to engage students to learn subjects which may not be very interesting on their own, says founder and CEO Tom Davidson.

Finally, advancements in manufacturing and medicine over the past century are being matched in education. While the two former fields would today be unrecognizable to anyone from the early 1900s, “[teaching] would look very similar.”

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“I think now, you have this ability to use technology to really turn that on its head, to empower teachers,” said Davidson.

Concepts and technologies in adaptive learning and gamification allow students to get individualized lesson plans in an engaging format.

“[Digital learning] uses incentives and rewards to move students along, and encourage them… it’s truly scientific, it’s data-driven, but it’s also meant to empower students uniquely,” he said.

Davidson laments the many important life skills not taught in traditional schools.

“There are these that have been left, very much, on the side of the table… they don’t know what a mortgage is, they don’t know what a loan is, they don’t know what compound interest is, how the stock market works,” he told What’s Working in Washington.

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