Last time we spoke to Khang Vo about the problem of retention, the importance of quality interaction for our students, and how technology can help us do that at scale – focusing AI where it can help, and human energy where it is most needed. This time, let’s get into the nitty gritty of what that means in practice.
What are you / your product doing at the moment?
ClassCom is solving 3 key problems: Teaching Assistant, Personalised Learning Experiences, and Community Building. It is integrated into the LMS to gather course data and use students’ data only when needed. We stored a minimum amount of data on our server. We put security and privacy at the highest level.
- Teaching Assistant: ClassCom uses course materials and forums to build up the chatbot to use to answer students’ queries at any time. ClassCom forwards the question to a human if it cannot find the answer.
- Personalised Learning Experience: ClassCom allows lecturers to set up personalised learning plans for students. This includes personalised feedback to motivate students, reminders for students of important tasks, and offers specific advice for students at risk.
- Community Building: every week, ClassCom pulls data from LMS and builds up a friend recommendation table, and then allows students to play a fun game to match with their best buddy. This creates a community that students can come when they need help
Where do you think this technology will go in the future?
ClassCom’s roadmap has 3 stages:
- Stage 1: Simple and effective ways for individual educators to set up a Virtual Assistant to help with student support, student engagement and student connection
- Stage 2: An internal community allows individuals to share resources and practices to each other.
- Stage 3: a virtual learning assistant that helps students to build deep understanding and analytical reasoning in the course through 1 on 1 tutor, immediate feedback and formative assessment.
How will that change the role of educators? What will educators be doing more/less of in the future?
As a virtual assistant takes care of first-level of service and engagement, educators now have time to plan, design and build higher quality learning content, assessment and relationships with students.
With a strong sense of community, ClassCom opens up endless possibilities for educators to facilitate their class in the online environment. Educators can organise different group activities and projects for students to build up teamwork and real world skills. All the time spent on pushing students to talk to each other now can be used for actual learning.
How can institutions get ahead of this change? What are some good steps to begin with?
In the Horizontal Report, the 5 key areas that institution leaders care about when implementing new technology: cost, faculty receptiveness, risk of failure, learning impact and support for equity and inclusion.
ClassCom has an iterative approach, where institutions can start with a low cost, and low risk of failure with an effective learning impact to smooth the adoption of the technology. We have found that as long as the technology works well, faculties are more willing to adopt as it saves their time and allow all students to access to the same learning content at their own pace and schedule.