Why is AI adaptive learning so popular?

When we talk about artificial intelligence, we first think of its application scenarios, and the field of education is undoubtedly one of the largest scenarios for the application of artificial intelligence. Education companies, education practitioners, and experts in the field of education are all talking about the changes that artificial intelligence has brought to education. Among them, the most in-depth teaching process and the one that has the greatest impact on the education industry is AI intelligent adaptive learning. Using artificial intelligence algorithms to provide scalable, data-driven personalized education is the fundamental goal of AI intelligent adaptive learning.

AI adaptive learning has become one of the most popular topics in industry, academia and research.

On November 15, Leifeng.com will jointly hold the AI+ Intelligent Adaptive Education Summit with Squirrel AI Learning and IEEE Education Engineering and Adaptive Education Standards Working Group, which will bring together top domestic and foreign teams. IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) is the largest professional society in the United States and the largest professional academic organization in the world. The organization is a major authority in academic fields such as international computers, telecommunications, biomedicine, electricity and consumer electronics. In the fields of electrical and electronic engineering, computer and control technology, IEEE publishes nearly 1/3 of the world's literature.

We will invite top scholars such as Turing Award winner John Edward Hopcroft, Michael Jordan, a member of three American academies and a master of machine learning, Avron Barr, chairman of the IEEE Educational Technology Committee, and Li Jia, president of Google AI China Center; founders of well-known domestic education startups such as VIPKID, Zuoyebang, Hujiang.com, DaDa English, Zhangmen 1-on-1, Xuebajun, YiQiZuoye, ZuoyeBox, and Boxfish English; and the most influential foreign AI adaptive education companies such as Knewton, Byju's, DreamBox, Duolingo, ALEKS, and AltSchool will gather in Beijing to discuss hot topics of AI adaptive education.

If you are curious about how artificial intelligence will change the education ecosystem, if you are interested in investment projects in the education sector, if you want to learn the latest views of top scholars in academia on AI+adaptive education, if you want to communicate closely with the founders of the most influential education startups from all over the world, you are welcome to sign up for this conference!

Here, you can learn how Turing Award winners and machine learning masters view the changes that artificial intelligence will bring to the future society, hear the sharp views of the founders of domestic education unicorn companies, and see how the world's top AI adaptive education companies understand future education. The most intense ideological confrontation, the most luxurious guest lineup, and the most cutting-edge interpretation of views, this annual event is not to be missed!

So far, more than 40 online education institutions in China have announced the launch of AI education products. Among these companies, there are education giants such as New Oriental, TAL Education, and iFLYTEK; there are Hujiang.com, VIPKID, and 51Talk that provide online English courses and tools; there are also question bank/homework platform companies such as Zuoyebang, 18Zuoye, Zuoyebox, Xuebajun, Yuantiku, Afanti, etc. There are also companies specializing in AI adaptive learning such as Squirrel AI Learning from Xueue Education, Lunda, English Fluency, Onion Mathematics, Xiansheng Education, and Xueba Classroom.

Except for the education giants that provide comprehensive multi-category products, the products of most of these institutions are mainly concentrated in niche areas such as AI question banks, AI homework and AI assessments, and do not touch on the core part of education - teaching.

This part is the most indispensable part of the entire learning process and the most important part for students. Although tool-based products are also valuable and solve the problems of convenience and accessibility of education, they do not fundamentally solve the problems of insufficient teaching staff and lack of personalized education. Companies that focus on AI intelligent adaptive learning have seen this pain point.

According to Wikipedia, adaptive learning, also known as "adaptive teaching," is a teaching method that uses algorithms to detect students' learning paths and provide students with personalized, customized learning content. The system can continuously adjust and provide learning paths and learning content suitable for students based on their needs and answers to questions. This technology covers research results in various fields such as computer science, artificial intelligence, psychometrics, education, psychology, and brain science.

Abroad, adaptive learning has a history of more than 20 years, from the earliest rule-based adaptation to the current artificial intelligence-based adaptation. And it has long been applied, covering hundreds of subjects in different countries and age groups, from elementary school, junior high school, high school to vocational education. Its effect has been well verified, whether for elementary school students or junior high school students, liberal arts students or science students, it can bring improvement in grades.

With the support of artificial intelligence, the pace of personalized education is accelerating. In order to distinguish it from traditional adaptive education, companies currently engaged in artificial intelligence adaptive education tend to call themselves "intelligent adaptive education". Artificial intelligence adaptive learning is an upgrade of traditional adaptive learning and an exploration of new learning methods.

Representative AI adaptive education companies abroad include Knewton and ALEKS. On April 19 this year, Jose Ferreira , founder of Knewton, Dan Bindman, former chief data scientist of ALEKS , and Professor Susan Zvacek, former vice president of the University of Denver , came to the "2018 Global AI Adaptive Education Summit" and had a dialogue with Li Haoyang, founder of Squirrel AI Learning, and Dr. Cui Wei, chief scientist of Yixue Education, to discuss related issues of adaptive education.

Jose Ferreira believes that "the mobile Internet can provide and mine data, and with data, personalization can be achieved, and personalization can change the quality of education. AI intelligent adaptive education can mine students' data, help them learn, and use the generated data for personalized education."

Professor Susan from the United States pointed out that the AI ​​intelligent adaptive learning system simulates the teaching experience and knowledge experience of an excellent teacher, and provides students with a personalized learning method based on mastery learning that is very flexible and more effective. Compared with the teacher-centered online education in the past, AI intelligent adaptive learning is student-centered, and MOOCs-style online education simply explains knowledge.

Dan Bindman believes that "high-quality content, intelligent AI that draws a state map of knowledge transformation for all students, and tailor-made selection materials" are important support points for the AI ​​adaptive learning system.

And these are exactly what Squirrel AI Learning is doing.

In early 2014, Yixue Education formed a core team whose members came from the world's three largest AI adaptive education institutions, Knewton, Realizeit, and ALEKS. It innovated on the basis of integrating the most cutting-edge AI adaptive education technology, making Yixue Education a unicorn enterprise in the AI ​​adaptive education industry.

Dr. Cui Wei, chief scientist of Squirrel AI Learning at Yixue Education, said in an interview with Leiphone.com that the goal of Yixue Education is to create an application similar to IBM Watson and AlphaGo that can imitate human behavioral characteristics and decision-making capabilities and replace real teachers to complete personalized teaching work.

At present, Yixue Education has applied AI intelligent adaptive learning technology in the field of K12 education, and successfully developed "Squirrel AI", the first AI intelligent adaptive learning engine in China with complete independent intellectual property rights and advanced algorithms as the core.

Xxue's "Squirrel AI" intelligent adaptive learning system uses a number of artificial intelligence technologies:

Knowledge graph and graph theory are used to describe and represent the subject knowledge system;

The Bayesian knowledge tracing theory is used to determine whether students have mastered the knowledge points to the standard;

After obtaining a certain amount of data, Yixue Education uses classification trees and fuzzy logic to recommend optimal learning content;

Genetic algorithms and evolution theory are used to recommend the best learning path, and reinforcement learning and deep learning are used to recommend the most suitable teaching mode for students.

Xueer has achieved many industry-leading results in the field of AI adaptive education, such as ultra-nanoscale knowledge point splitting; the world's first association probability of non-correlated knowledge points; and the earliest concept of reconstructing knowledge maps based on error causes; in the adversarial model of the future Squirrel AI adaptive system, students and teachers are simulated in the system and can surpass and iterate through self-confrontation.

A complete artificial intelligence adaptive learning system includes multiple links such as testing, teaching, learning, and practicing, and each link is crucial.

The first step of personalized teaching is to understand students’ knowledge level and build student portraits. The “Squirrel AI” intelligent adaptive learning system of Yixue Education includes an advanced knowledge gap diagnosis system, which can quickly and accurately diagnose students’ mastery of each knowledge point through only a small number of test questions.

The system includes four major functions: diagnosis before learning, diagnosis during the learning process, recommendation of personalized learning plans and personalized learning content, and planning of personalized learning paths.

In the past, students needed to constantly "practice questions" to fill in their knowledge gaps, which was like looking for a needle in a haystack, and 80% of the work was in vain. Based on student portraits, Squirrel AI's intelligent adaptive learning system can accurately recommend learning content to students, so that students can learn what they don't know .

This system can even predict whether students are capable of mastering certain knowledge points and how long it will take to master these knowledge points, thereby finding out the knowledge points that will help the student the most and formulating an overall study plan . For example, a junior high school student is about to take the high school entrance examination, and the remaining time is not enough for him to master all the knowledge points. If all the knowledge points are reviewed, it is likely that they will only skim through them and not master any of them well. At this time, the system will choose to give up strategically and recommend that students prioritize learning knowledge points with high scores and easy to master to maximize their scores.

In this system, each student learns according to his or her own learning path. The AI ​​teacher diagnoses each student's knowledge gaps and assigns him or her different study time, learning content and test questions, allowing students to learn in a personalized and efficient manner.

From 2017 to date, Squirrel AI Learning of Yixue Education has conducted more than ten comparative experiments in Zhengzhou, Nanchang, Wuhan, Jiaxing, Chengdu and other places. The results have proved that its AI intelligent adaptive products are more effective than teaching by experienced teachers.

Providing scalable, data-driven personalized education is the fundamental goal of AI intelligent adaptive learning. As Li Haoyang, the founder of Squirrel AI Learning, said, "Education should not be a metaphysics." Through artificial intelligence technology, turning education into a science that can be defined, quantified, and taught, thereby solving problems such as insufficient excellent teachers and lack of personalized education, is the direction that AI intelligent adaptive learning companies including Yixue Education are working towards.

Since 2017, the AI ​​intelligent adaptive education track has been surging. In addition to Yixue Education, English Fluency has continued to expand with the help of AI English teachers; Xiansheng Education is a student company of the second phase of Baidu AI Accelerator; Lunda focuses on the two subjects of English and mathematics, and creates an intelligent assessment system based on self-developed algorithms; Onion Mathematics is valued at US$135 million; Xueba Classroom, Gaomu Learning, and Xizhi Education are also powerful; former Sogou COO Ru Liyun founded Grape Intelligence after leaving the company and also joined the AI ​​intelligent adaptive education camp, and industry competition is still intensifying.

Of course, current artificial intelligence technology is still in the weak artificial intelligence stage, and the AI ​​adaptive education industry is still in its early stages of development. There is still a long way to go in terms of technology, practical application, and popularization.

In the future, with the development of artificial intelligence technology, what changes will AI adaptive learning undergo? Where will AI adaptive education go? What new trends are there in the global AI+ education field?

The above questions require joint discussion and answers from experts in the field of artificial intelligence, education practitioners, and industry insiders.

Leifeng.com has held three Global Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Summits so far, bringing together the top lineup in the field of artificial intelligence. Guests participating in the keynote speeches and reports at the conference include Turing Award winners from the academic world, academicians of the Chinese and American Academy of Sciences, academicians of the Chinese and American Academy of Engineering, and top professors from many prestigious universities such as CMU, MIT, and Stanford, as well as AI executives from the industrial world, including Microsoft, Intel, Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu and many other companies. In the past two years, more than 10 academicians from China and the United States, more than 20 IEEE Fellows, hundreds of scholars with high reputations in their respective professional fields, and well-known entrepreneurs, investors and innovators in the field of AI have come to CCF-GAIR to share their insights, and more than 5,000 AI scholars and practitioners have come to CCF-GAIR to communicate with each other.

On November 15, Leiphone.com (official account: Leiphone.com) and Yixue Education will join forces to co-host the "AI+ Intelligent Adaptive Education Summit" at Beijing Kerry Center, inviting academic leaders from home and abroad, people in the AI ​​field, people in the education field, media, AI and education industry analysts to discuss the future trends of AI intelligent adaptive education. Stay tuned.

The following is the proposed meeting agenda:

Hosted by: Leiphone.com, Yixue-Squirrel AI Intelligent Adaptive Education, IEEE Education Engineering and Adaptive Education Standards Working Group

Co-organized by: Zaojiu, iResearch, Haitong International, SIG

Date: November 15-16, 2018

Location: Kerry Center, Beijing

Number of people: 1500

Audience composition: Investors, AI professionals, education professionals, media, AI and education industry analysts

Proposed agenda ( 60% of the speakers have confirmed their attendance , and some are being invited):

November 15th, first day of meeting

November 16, second day of meeting

Michael Jordan

Pehong Chen Distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Statistics at the University of California, Berkeley, member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a leader in machine learning

John Edward Hopcroft

Turing Award winner, American computer scientist

Jeannette Wing

Professor at Carnegie Mellon University, Assistant Director of the Computing and Information Science Engineering Division of the National Science Foundation of the United States, Fellow of ACM and IEEE

Robert Pearlstein

Vice President of Stanford Research Institute International (SRI)

Rose Luckin

Professor of Learner Centred Design at the Knowledge Lab, UCL, London

Artur Dubrawski

Research Professor, CMU Robotics Institute

Art Graesser

Professor of Psychology and Intelligent Systems Institute at the University of Memphis, Honorary Research Fellow at the Department of Education at the University of Oxford

Robby Robson

Research mathematician in algebraic geometry and number theory, IEEE Fellow

Johannes Gehrke

German computer scientist, Microsoft Technical Fellow, ACM researcher

Zheng Nanning

Academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, renowned expert in the field of automatic control, IEEE Fellow

Guo Yike

Professor of Computing Science, Department of Computer Science, Imperial College London, Senior Member of IEEE, Member of British Computer Society

Yang Qiang

Chair Professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE), Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

Kenneth Forbus

Walter P. Murphy Professor of Computer Science and Professor of Education, Northwestern University

Avron Barr

Chairman of IEEE Education Technology Committee

Prasad Ram

Founder and CEO of Gooru

Michael Yudelson

Senior Research Scientist, ACT (American College Test) Learning Solutions Group

Li Jia

President of Google AI China Center

Carles Sierra

Director of the Spanish AI Research Institute, Professor of the Institute of Artificial Intelligence (IIIA) of the Spanish Research Council (CSIC)

Knewton

A unicorn in the field of artificial intelligence education in the United States, it provides personalized education. Teachers and publishers can provide students with intelligent and adaptive education programs through its education platform.

Knewton founder: Jose Ferreira

BYJU'S

Founded in India in 2007, it is mainly aimed at students from K6 to K12. The courses can be flexibly customized and include videos, interactive games, test assessments and other content.

Byju’s founder: Byju Raveendran

Dreambox Learning

Founded in 2006, it provides digital mathematics courses for K8 stage. Its products can dynamically differentiate and adapt problems based not only on students' questions, but also on the way students solve them.

DreamBox CEO: Jessie Woolley-Wilson

Duolingo

Provide users with free personalized multilingual learning services through adaptive communication and gamification.

Duolingo Co-Founder & CEO: Luis von Ahn

ALEKS

Founded in 1996, it is the first K12 adaptive system in the United States to achieve large-scale commercial success. The system is applied to mathematics, science and business subjects at the K12 stage and university level. It created the KST knowledge space theory that is widely recognized and adopted by the industry.

ALEKS CTO: Nicolas Thiéry

AltSchool

By developing customized software and hardware products, we help teachers create more personalized teaching plans.

Max Ventilla, Founder & CEO of Altschool

Knowre

Founded in 2012, it is a cloud-based adaptive middle school mathematics learning product. Students can answer questions on the platform to understand their specific situation in mastering knowledge points. The platform will also provide personalized courses based on the students' answers.

Knowre Co-CEO & Co-Founder: Yong Jae Kim

Smart Sparrow

Founded in Australia in 2010, it is an online adaptive platform that has no content itself but helps teachers design adaptive teaching content based on the dynamic changes in student performance.

Dror Ben-Naim, Founder and CEO, Smart Sparrow

Khan Academy

An online recording and broadcasting platform that provides an adaptive practice system to develop practice plans based on the courses watched and exercises done by users. It has more than 10,000 teaching videos and 150,000 exercises. Khan Academy announced the transformation of MOOC to intelligent adaptation in September 2017.

Khan Academy founder: Salman Khan

Kid Adaptive

Founded in January 2012, it is an adaptive learning company that has developed an "adaptive learning platform" that can create learner profiles, making it easier for parents and teachers to manage and operate. It can also make real-time changes based on the learner's learning status, thereby further realizing a personalized learning experience.

Dylan Arena, Co-founder and Chief Learning Scientist at KidAdaptive

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