Kognity Customer Story
American School of Doha
Location: Doha, Qatar
Curriculum: IBDP
Subjects: Kognity Bundle
Location: Doha, Qatar
Curriculum: IBDP
Subjects: Kognity Bundle
Steven LoBianco is an experienced Economics teacher at the American School of Doha in Qatar. Previously accustomed to using printed textbooks with his International Baccalaureate (IB) students, he made the switch to Kognity’s intelligent textbooks in 2017, and he hasn’t looked back since.
American School of Doha’s challenges before Kognity:
- Paper textbooks quickly became outdated, and repurchasing copies was time-consuming and expensive
- Creating exam style questions to prep students for exams took too much time
- Difficult to keep track of students’ homework
- Spending hours grading students work
- Pressure to deliver up to date and exciting content to students
- Lack of time for higher level discussions
- Some Economics textbooks can be overwhelming for his students.
Subject-specific relevancy

“I like the fact that Kognity keeps getting updated with newer information. The news articles, videos, examples and case studies are all recent. With the printed textbook, it was just whatever was available on the date it was printed. Having a source that is constantly updating along with the recency of the examples is great.”
Keeping track of students’ progress
“Kognity has been a good replacement and definitely an improvement over using a traditional textbook. Having a series of practice IB-style questions that I don’t then have to come up with or tell them to find online from past papers saves me a lot of time. Previously, I had students who barely did their homework, and when they did, they would turn in papers that I would spend all night grading, which I obviously don’t have time to do! I want the kids to have freedom, but I also want to keep tabs on what they’re doing. I have appreciated having the auto-correcting questions built in. It just sends me a report on results, so I can do a quick check-up.”
Easy administration
“Kognity allows me to spend my planning time searching for more activity-based or discussion-based activities. I don’t have to worry about delivering content or grading homework. It allows me the flexibility to do the things that are honestly more fun to do as a teacher.”Â
Accessibility for all

“The students find it’s clearly laid out. It’s long enough but not overwhelming. Some textbooks in their other classes can sometimes go into detail that is way beyond what is on the syllabus. Kognity doesn’t miss any content that the kids need to know, but it tries to get it done in a reasonable amount of time, so the kids feel able to complete the reading assignments without being bogged down.”