NogginLabs making inroads in e-learning

The Chicago Sun-Times reported that the eight-year-old company, NogginLabs has won its first Innovate Illinois Award, and intends to use the prize to patent its technology.

The technology, called the Instructional Genome, uses artificial intelligence to change Web-based instructional programs on the fly, eliminating the need for human programmers to start every project from scratch. The result: a sophisticated, interactive program that engages learners in a way a "talking head" instructor never could.

An extra feature is that the Web-based curricula doesn't require high-speed Internet connections.

"My goal is to identify every way anyone can learn anything, and to have a technology that can create an e-learning system that responds," said NogginLabs co-founder and CEO Brian Knudson.

its most challenging project is building a 12-hour curriculum to teach clinical psychologists how to lead group-therapy sessions using a technique developed by Marsha Linehan, a Seattle psychologist who helps people with borderline personality disorders.

The curriculum simulates a therapy session with five clients, a therapist and a co-therapist.

The curriculum includes games, pretend conversations, lessons in Zen principles and exercises in concepts such as "core mindfulness."

The Instructional Genome works to make the characters respond to the changing dialogue of the group therapy session, and at the same time, teach the therapists new concepts.

Om.