Numerade is bringing its STEM videos and multi-modal AI tutor, Ace, to the students of George Fox … [+]
Numerade
One of the biggest challenges facing college students in STEM courses is finding the help you need when doing your problem sets when you actually sit down to them. If all work were done during regular business hours and in locations near student support centers, this would not be a problem. But the realities of student academic work schedules, whether due to balancing other priorities such as work and family or just due to a surplus of distractions and lack of disciplined working habits, are such that it is often late at night when students find themselves staring at equations, and problem sets that are resisting giving up their answers.
Numerade, with over 150 million AI video tutorials for STEM courses, solves this problem. Founded in 2019, Numerade has worked with over 60,000 professional educators worldwide to develop step-by-step video solutions to standard problems from STEM textbooks. Enhanced with its AI tutor, Ace, students can just point their camera at any problem in countless textbooks to receive a step-by-step video solution delivered by an experienced educator. Students can view and review the solution and can ask Ace questions about it in a conversational manner.
George Fox University, the largest private university in Oregon, has just entered into a strategic partnership with Numerade to provide these resources to students free of charge.
Numerade CEO Nhon Ma expressed his excitement about this partnership: “As a college student, it was tough to get help from my teachers’ assistants or college tutors due to the inconvenience and cost, especially evenings and weekends. Numerade was created to solve this pain point for most students.”
Rick Muthiah, Director of Learning Support Services at George Fox University, acknowledged the potential benefit for students, citing AI integration as a significant factor in their decision-making and the ability to provide students with tools that can be responsive to their needs while doing so in a way that enhances student learning. “Given the abundance of AI tools, I see great value in guiding students to Numerade’s Ace AI tutor, which is trained to promote learning. Numerade is working to foster true understanding rather than just providing quick answers.”
Ensuring that students are using the tools to drive understanding rather than to avoid having to think has been a key objective throughout this process. In describing the effort, Nhon Ma said that George Fox University selected Numerade in part because “educational-based AI solutions that are specifically designed to help students learn, not cheat.”
For the educators and administrators at George Fox, this partnership represents an opportunity to leverage advanced technology and AI within classes to ensure student success. A factor often cited for the decision was Numerade’s hybrid approach, which combines the expertise of over 60,000 professional educators with AI to guarantee real learning and content accuracy.
The Challenge Of Effectively Using AI Tools
The biggest challenge for learning with good AI tools is similar to that of trying to learn from an over-eager human tutor. It is too tempting for the tutor to take the reins and do the work rather than coaching the student through the work themselves. What is ultimately needed is an environment where the student can get all the modeling and examples they might need but is also expected to do the requisite amount of original work to learn the material.
Consider the example of a robotic personal trainer with a human client. The robot approaches the squat rack, models perfect form, and does the intended number of reps. Unless the student then takes the weights themselves, the point of the exercise will be lost.
In the case of writing assignments, when given the AI, a single prompt can produce the result; it is easy for students to find themselves in the passive observer role, deriving no benefit from the work. In this case, the assignment could be modified to require the students to at least assume the role of editor or compositor, using components that were perhaps AI-generated to produce original work ultimately. In the case of a problem set, where there is not much to do with a worked-out solution other than to present it, different sorts of changes will be required. This might require using a system that can produce a collection of comparable problems for a student to solve after the student has had the AI work through all of the original assignments.
At the end of the day, the purpose of assigning a problem set is not to have the student solve the problems per se but to use the work that students do while solving the problems to engender a certain amount of learning in the student. A system like Numerade, by ensuring that no one is ever stuck on a problem, can play an essential role in ensuring that students are potentially able to benefit from the assignment. Ensuring the story does not end will be equally crucial to achieving the ultimate learning goals.
