Article

Explore, Engage, Experience and Empower Education

Adarsh Sudhindra

Vice President - Growth and Strategy, North America

December 15, 2023

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AI in Education Technology

At Excelsoft, we have recognised the need to take up an organisation-wide initiative to provide thrust and impetus to artificial intelligence and other related technologies. We have not only been emphasising the need for an ‘urgent AI push’ but have also been working in a clear direction in this regard.

There have been a variety of activities and initiatives that are already underway across the organisation. AI-driven features and functionality have been introduced into our products. There have been several proofs-of-concept (POC) of using AI tools and technologies. Our sales team has been positioning these products and solutions for our customers. We are conducting workshops and seminars frequently to keep all teams up-to-date on the latest developments in AI. Many departments have incorporated AI tools into their functions. Many of our colleagues have been using AI in their day-to-day work.

While all these actions are encouraging, we realised that there is a strong need to formulate a clear plan for an ‘organisation-wide AI strategy’ and execute the same in a structured manner as a programme. Earlier this year, we created an AI Focus Group at Excelsoft that will take ownership of this programme.

AI Focus Group at Excelsoft

The AI Focus Group focuses on the following core objectives:

  • Organisation Level Guidelines: For use of AI and ML in Products and Services
  • Alignment of AI Initiatives: Across all Products and Services
  • Capability Building: For Product, Tech and Operations Teams
  • Standard Tools and Libraries: Validated set of Tools and Libraries for Product, Tech and Operations Teams
  • Prototypes and Features: For Customer and Market-Driven Use-Cases
  • Legal and Ethical Considerations: For use of AI in Products and Services

AI in Processes and Operations

We have started incorporating AI into our processes and operations. Below are some key areas where we have been successful:

  • Development: AI-Assisted Code Generation, Review, and Correction has clearly increased the productivity of our developers across technologies. We are working closely with Microsoft and Amazon, exploring their tools in this effort.
  • Quality Assurance: AI-Assisted Generation of Test Scripts, Test Plans, and Test Cases has increased the overall quality and efficiency of our QA Teams.
  • Deployment: AI-Assisted Automated Deployments and Issue Prediction are being experimented with for seamless, issue-free deployments.
  • Technical Documentation: AI-Assisted Specifications Documentation and user manuals are being tried out for quick, accurate technical documentation.
  • HR and Learning and Development: The HR teams are actively using AI tools for screening CVs and AI-Assisted Policy Documentation.

AI Features in Products

Over the past few months, we have worked with our customers and gathered insights from forums and industry experts to identify key market needs that can be solved by applying AI. Below are some active projects we have been undertaking:

Online Assessments:

  • AI-Assisted Item and Test Construction
  • AI-Assisted Auto-Marking of Written, Spoken and Programming Responses
  • Smart Post-test Forensics
  • Smart Flagging of Duplicate and Compromised Items

Remote Proctoring:

  • AI in Remote Proctoring: Face, Voice, Object, Keystrokes Detection
  • Selective blurring of test content for proctors

Learning Experience and Content Services:

  • AI-Assisted Content Generation and Beautification
  • AI chatbots for Content Discovery and Tutoring
  • AI for Student Profiling and Personalised Learning
  • AI-Powered Content Recommendations

Student Success and Higher Education:

  • Predictive Analytics and Early Alerts
  • Detection of At-risk Students

Technologies and Models

Excelsoft has been an early adopter of the OpenAI platform and APIs. We have extensively used ChatGPT 3.5, GPT 4.0, and DALL 3.0 in our prototypes and features. In addition to OpenAI, we have explored other well-known LLMs:

  • Llama 2 (from Meta)
  • Bard (from Google)
  • Stable Diffusion (from Stability.ai)
  • Titan (from Amazon)

Risks and Challenges

While AI has in general shown great promise in various applications, we are also fully aware of the potential risks and concerns associated with its use, including bias, fairness, misinformation, fake content, ethical concerns, security threats, and legal and privacy issues.

We continue to observe this space closely. We participate in several AI communities and are working on setting up strong guidance principles for the use of AI in our products and services. We have also taken several measures to prevent any violation of the legal or ethical considerations of our employees and customers.

Moving forward, we are committed to executing our organisation-wide AI strategy in a structured manner.

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