A Success Story in Innovation and Licensing

Have you ever thought about enhancing the impact of your research through commercialization? At the Carleton University Innovation Transfer Office (CITO) within Industry and Partnership Services (IPS), we specialize in helping faculty license their innovative work to achieve this goal. A prime example is the Early Math Assessment at School (EMA@School) tool, developed by Dr. Jo-Anne LeFevre and Dr. Heather Douglas in the Department of Cognitive Science. This copyrighted tool is helping teachers and school districts identify children in need of extra help in mathematics.

In 2021, as COVID-19 disrupted schools across the world, Alberta Education saw an urgent need to address students’ numeracy gaps. The Carleton MathLab, led by Dr. LeFevre, was asked to create a solution. With a deep understanding of how early numeracy skills develop, the team at the MathLab crafted the EMA@School—a grade-specific numeracy screener designed to assess foundational math skills in children from kindergarten to Grade 4.

The Early Math Assessment @ School (EMA@School) is a numeracy screener that was designed to identify students in kindergarten to grade 3 who are underachieving relative to their peers. For students in grades 2 and 3, it includes four foundational skills: number comparison, writing numbers from dictation, placement of numbers on a 0-1000 number line, ordering numbers. It also includes one mathematical outcome: arithmetic fluency.

Read the full story on the IPS webpage.