Jonathan Katzman
Chief Product Officer

Jonathan Katzman is Chief Product Officer at Minerva, where he leads development of the technology used to provide students an exceptional academic experience, including the hallmark Forum platform. Previously, Katzman founded Xoopit, an email organizational tool created on the premise that personal data was moving off desktops and into the cloud. In 2009, Xoopit was acquired by Yahoo. Katzman went on to lead the Yahoo Social Bar product, which grew to become a top three Facebook application, as well as other social initiatives across Yahoo. From acquisition through 2010, Katzman also managed social and photo initiatives in Yahoo Mail.

Prior to Xoopit, Katzman built and ran Tellme’s directory assistance business, which accounted for nearly half of the company’s revenue. Katzman has also served as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Ignition Corporation and worked at Microsoft on the Office and FrontPage teams as a development lead and program manager. Having contributed to three successful startups, Katzman gives back to the entrepreneurial community through both angel investing and advisory work. Katzman earned a B.A. in Computer Science from Harvard University, where he graduated with honors and was elected into Phi Beta Kappa.

The Classroom of the Future

Science shows us that lectures are an efficient way to teach, but not an effective way to learn. Yet most colleges and universities still use the antiquated lecture model to disseminate information to masses of students. The classroom of the future looks drastically different than a lecture hall with hundreds of students taking copious notes as a professor stands at the front. Jonathan Katzman, the Chief Product Officer at Minerva, is the architect behind the most today’s most innovative classroom: the Minerva Forum™.

Katzman has spearheaded the development of the Forum, an advanced learning environment designed to facilitate face-to-face interaction between professors and students in a highly intensive small seminar environment.  The science of learning was applied in the design and features of the Forum, giving professors the tools to systematically teach more effectively and students the opportunity to more effectively learn important concepts. In this talk, Jonathan will share what we know about the science of learning and how this knowledge was applied to the development of the Forum. He will share how data is used to help both professors and students during and after class, and how the Forum enables more interaction between faculty and students, and among students, than a traditional physical classroom.

• September 10, 2015 BMO Market Back to School Conference, NYC
  
• March 1, 2015 LAUNCH Festival, SF
  
• February 2, 2015 Stanford Digital Learning Forum Conference, Stanford