Crossing rivers, walking miles and miles fighting many obstacles just to reach your school and study. That’s h0w our parents' generation reached school. Fast forward to now, students don’t even have to leave the comfort of their home, even bed for that matter, thanks to online classes and technology!
It all started during the COVID-19 pandemic when the entire globe was in lockdown. Everything came to a standstill, except for education. Even now when everything is back to normal, many are ditching the traditional classrooms and are opting for online courses. It’s easy, convenient and is tailored to their pace of learning. So, are they to be blamed here?
Before Covid, only some Ed-techs companies could sustain themselves. They were the least funded sector in 2019. But, Covid forced us to a new normal of online classes. Fast forward to 2021, the landscape of Edtechs has changed rapidly. It raised $4.7 billion and became the third most funded sector in the world. Not only this, but three Edtechs startups upGrad, Eruditus, Vedantu also rose to become Unicorns.
Coming back to recent times, Ed-techs are going through it again. Amidst the pressure from investors and funding slowdowns, Ed-tech companies are fighting hard to maintain their existence especially when the competition is at an all time high. Customer retention is currently the biggest challenge for them. To face this challenge head on, Ed-techs are turning toward AI to help them on their customer retention journey.
Let’s discuss how AI can aid Edtech companies to retain customers.
Marketing
AI can help businesses like Byjus, Vedantu etc to fine tune other areas of their business like Sales, Marketing etc. Customer acquisition costs are unbelievably high for platforms like Byju’s, Vedantu, Scaler etc. AI can help them target the right customers and optimize their marketing spends to a great extent.
Saves Money
Employing a human tutor will cost them around $15 per hour. While employing an AI tutor is way cheaper. Employing an AI tutor costs just a fraction of what a company will have to pay a human.
Personalized Training
AI algorithms track user behaviour and preferences to give them the best learning path that they would benefit from. This keeps students more engaged because the content is tailored based on their special needs.
Predictive Analysis
Users might disengage and drop from your platform in the drop of a hat. But AI can help you predict this a lot sooner. With its predictive analysis, these platforms can then intervene and provide personalized support to these students, increasing the likelihood of retention.
Designing Curriculum
AI helps these platforms to elevate their textbooks and curriculum so that the students can benefit from them the best.
Gamification
Gamification in the Ed-tech industry is quite popular. Explaining complex topics through visualizations and examples motivates students and ensures deeper understanding of the topic. Quizzes , rewards, games on the topic of study ensures that the core concept is clear to the students and that they can ace their exams.
But like everything, AI can have some shortcomings too. Using AI for educational purposes can be counterintuitive, because there can be instances where students can misuse AI to cheat in exams, for example. We as humans are slowly and steadily becoming more and more dependent on technology for various things. In such times, it is important to make our future generation more independent thinkers. So it is crucial to understand and control the use of AI so that we don’t make our future generations dependent on technologies. Also, transparency on the data collected by these apps is important to safeguard the privacy of the students.
Can AI replace human tutors?
While we are at it, it is important to note that human intervention is very important while employing AI for educational purposes. A human instructor cannot be replaced by machines. Only a human mind can understand the nuances of another human mind. Emotions also play a key role while educating humans, something that AI can’t quite catch. AI can do wonders for Ed-tech as long as they do it in a controlled fashion.
(Author: Karishma Chandnani is a Content Writer at TechDoQuest. She offers refreshing & youthful perspective on the topics she writes about).