Boosting PISA Ranking with Artificial Intelligence in Education

Utilization of artificial intelligence technology (artificial intelligence – AI) continues to be optimized in various fields to make it easier for people to carry out certain activities. No exception in the field of education, a number of problems are still a joint homework in Indonesia to improve the quality of learning outcomes. Especially now that the pandemic is forcing every student to independently carry out learning activities from home – forced to adopt learning technology to pursue the competencies proclaimed in the curriculum.

Regarding AI in education, DailySocial opportunity to have a discussion with Co-Founder & CEO of CoLearn Abhay Saboo and Founder & CEO Blox.ai Ashwini Asokan. CoLearn is a startup EdTech in Indonesia that focuses on services to help K-12 students get learning content and services, especially in the fields of mathematics and physics. Meanwhile, Blox.ai is a PaaS-based startup that allows any company to develop its AI capabilities independently native.

Both CoLearn and Blox.ai are portfolios of Sequoia Capital India.

Starting from the vision

Starting the conversation, Abhay said that his vision with CoLearn was very clear, namely to help Indonesia improve its ranking in PISA. As is known, the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) is one of the benchmarks for the quality of education in a country. This research takes a sample of students from various countries to measure quality.

As per the 2018 survey, Indonesia is ranked 72 out of 77 countries. For math scores, it is ranked 72 out of 78 countries. While the value of science is ranked 70 out of 78 countries. Tend to be stagnant since the last 15 years.

Through its innovation, CoLearn currently has two main products. The first is the “Ask” feature which is powered by AI technology. Helping students find solutions when they have difficulty working on math or physics problems. Students simply take photos of the questions they are working on from the application, then the system will provide video content recommendations that are relevant to help work on the questions.

The second feature is an exclusive learning activity through Live Tutoring, to help students understand the concept of learning with experienced mentors. Here Abhay admits to applying fairly strict standardization, especially in terms of tutors and material delivery, to ensure that every student gets the output of learning outcomes. (learning outcomes) most optimal.

Likewise with Ashwini, in a time that requires many people to switch to EdTech this presents both an opportunity and a challenge for innovators to come up with the most relevant technology approaches. The ideal application of AI in education should also be able to make technology not only digitize education, but actually have an impact on efficiency and personalization.

In the end, education must always be two-way, the process of learning and teaching. Ashwini mentions the teaching process (training) this should be more optimized with AI in a platform EdTech. Because, the method or methodology in delivering the material will be closely correlated with the quality of the learning outcomes. And most importantly, AI must be able to provide a unique experience for each student, facilitating their individual learning needs and level of understanding.

Problems in Indonesia

At first glance, the CoLearn service is actually the same as the one provided by player EdTech lain. According to Abhay, the value proposition that the startup is trying to present is material quality. The focus on learning in a particular area allows CoLearn to focus more on teaching the basic concepts of a problem – instead of just helping each student answer the questions.

He said that taking case studies on tutoring activities, culture in China or India, the additional learning program outside the formal classroom was focused on sharpening the understanding of the concepts of the subjects learned in school. Meanwhile, when looking at Indonesia, not a few parents bring their children to tutoring to get help in doing homework they get from school or test preparation. This is what we are trying to facilitate more instantaneously through AI in the Ask feature.

Defining this problem is considered important for CoLearn, because basically every startup EdTech will have a similar approach – to do with the business model and ways to survive. For Abhay, he doesn't want to be a solution for all fields of study, so he decided to focus on certain fields that are considered to be able to increase Indonesia's PISA ranking globally.

A total of 4 million students since 4 months of operation is considered a good response from the market, about how the concept of learning is more personalized with AI and live tutoring which teaches more concepts can be accepted in Indonesia.

AI's Role

Ashwini said that many AI scenarios could be created to provide a better learning experience. Regarding his collaboration with CoLearn, he said, in the Practice Questions feature, learning outcomes will be analyzed to highlight aspects of students' weaknesses in certain subject matter, then the system can provide more relevant learning recommendations according to what is actually needed. Included in the Live Tutoring feature provided, when there is a question and answer interaction, an AI system can be implemented to help identify the unique needs of each student.

More personal learning will eventually become an important aspect in implementing technology-based education. At a time when many students are getting tired of Zoom classes or materials video on-demand, the most effective way that can be done to improve the quality of teaching is to identify each unique problem that each student has. Produce learning journey the good can be the priority of the players EdTech to be able to really solve the issue of education in Indonesia.

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