Kno, Inc., www.kno.com, a pioneer in education software, revealed today that an overwhelming number (95%) of college students using the Kno digital textbook application found it very useful and plan to use it again, according to a pilot conducted with four California Community Colleges, including De Anza, Cabrillo, Diablo Valley and Lake Tahoe. The pilot was conducted for the 2011 fall semester with 400 students and faculty in 27 classes using an open source textbook, Collaborative Statistics, written by Barbara Illowsky and Susan Dean. Students who used the Kno app said it was better than a physical textbook for reading, annotating, and searching for terms.

“It is exciting to see the book brought to life through digital enhancements by Kno,” said Barbara Illowsky, a Professor of Mathematics and Statistics, De Anza College. “The student feedback reinforces the need for more instructors to incorporate digital learning into the classroom to make learning fun and engaging.”

The Kno platform enabled the faculty to work with the open source book, Collaborative Statistics, to enhance the digital content with videos, photos, interactive homework and web links. According to the majority of students in the pilot, they found the videos to be the most useful digital enhancement to the book.

“This pilot with the California community colleges put Kno to the test and we got an A from the students that tested us,” said Osman Rashid, Co-Founder and CEO of Kno. “We’ve also learned through customer surveys that 54% of students who used Kno textbooks in their fall term received an A in their class. We’re excited to take the learnings from the study and feed that back into future product iterations.”

Kno makes it affordable and convenient for every student to access their textbooks and study materials whenever and on whichever platform they prefer. Kno’s digital textbook app takes academic content and brings it to life through more than 70 interactive features including highlighting, note-taking, bookmarking, interactive flash cards, Quiz Me, 3D, Smart Links, Journal and Kno Me analytics which make learning engaging, effective and social for students. Kno saves students 30-50% off the list price on over 150,000 titles and works on the web and iPad.

“The web version of the Kno app is very easy to navigate and I like how organized the layout is,” said Phillip Vaughan, a De Anza college student. “I would definitely use it again.”

About KNO

Kno, Inc. is an education software company on a mission to make learning engaging, effective, and social for students. Osman Rashid, the co-founder of Chegg, and Babur Habib, a consumer electronics veteran, founded Kno, Inc. in May 2009. The company has received funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Intel Capital, Goldman Sachs, FLOODGATE and GSV Capital and is based in Santa Clara, California. For more information, go to www.kno.com, or follow Kno at http://facebook.com/GoodtoKno and http://twitter.com/GoodtoKNO.