Author: Bikram Sengupta, IBM Research
Feeling restless could simply be the precursor of your most exciting journey yet
Getting Started
It was March 2012. Yes, it does seem light years away in the fast-paced times we live in. To provide some reference points, Facebook had just launched its IPO to much fanfare; and in a few months in July, the entire world would start grooving to PSY's Gangnam Style. In the period of lull between these two events, a few of us at IBM Research India were feeling a quiet unease. Maybe we were a little bored of working on very similar business problems for several years. Maybe we were reaching a point in our lives where one feels that time is running out to do things we care about. Maybe it was a bit of both. Whatever be the reasons, a few of us got together and decided we will review the state of Education to understand what we – as researchers in one of the world's largest technology companies, which placed a high value on "innovation that matters -- for our company and for the world" – could do to make a difference. Little did we know that the day we had this meeting would mark the beginning of a profound change in our careers.
Enthusiastic research and data gathering followed. As did countless brainstorming sessions and passionate debates. Internally, IBM had initiated one of its biggest transformations in its 100-year-old history – a move towards becoming a cognitive solutions and cloud platform company. Globally, the Education industry was starting to digitize, processes and platforms were being instrumented, and thus we could expect huge data sets to be created on virtually every aspect of interest – from learning and outcomes, content and collaboration, to pedagogy and administration. Gradually a picture started to emerge – what if we applied cognitive technologies to learn from all that data (most of which was unstructured), discover what works and what does not (and for whom), and use those insights to truly personalize learning?
We were certainly not the first research team to feel the urge to do something different. Nor was the idea of working on Education entirely new or novel, even within IBM. Like many such ideas born with the best of intentions, this could have led to a couple of patents, maybe a pilot or two, at best a few research papers, before we returned to our old lives.
However, what worked in our favor, to paraphrase Victor Hugo, was the power of an idea whose time had come.
On the Road
In a company reinventing itself through a massive transformation, we found an engaged audience in senior IBM leadership. While retaining a healthy dose of skepticism regarding commercial viability, they saw enough potential in the idea of cognitive education to give us the support we needed to start the journey. A visionary leader joined the initiative to inspire us further. A First of a Kind project with a major US school district followed [1], where we developed technologies to assist teachers in designing personalized interventions, using insights from learning content and student data analytics. Soon, enthusiastic colleagues from other IBM Research labs joined the effort. Technology innovation and pilots gained momentum – in India, Africa and the US.
We extended personalized learning to the space of intelligent tutors – and are now building systems that can answer student questions and assess them through a dialog or through multi-modal, adaptive games in case of children. An Education-focused business unit has been formed that has launched IBM's first commercial offering focused on the K-12 classroom [2, 3]. Signature partnerships with a leading publisher [3] and a beloved children's educational organization [4] have been established, to explore the efficacy of cognitive technologies in personalizing learning experiences in higher education and early childhood learning, respectively. We are studying the challenges associated with placing individuals onto successful career pathways, through cognitive services that can ease the transition from education to employment. We are also developing technologies to modernize corporate learning by making content more discoverable, consumable and personalized.
The Way Ahead
While the technologies being developed have shown early promise, the key to future success in cognitive education will rest on 3 things. First, scientific studies that provide irrefutable evidence of the learning gains and improved outcomes from the use of cognitive technologies. Second, the ability for the technologies to scale and work with minimal human intervention, while working seamlessly with human stakeholders in the loop. Third, innovative "freemium" business models that combine the responsibility to cater to those who are the most under-served by current educational systems, with the compulsion of earning revenue and creating a commercially sustainable venture.
We have certainly come a long distance from where we started in 2012, but are still early travelers who are being drawn by visions of exciting new destinations as they progress. The journey, though, is as important as the destinations it leads to, hence the thought of starting to document it here. In future articles, I will be sharing what we have learned so far, how this has shaped the perspectives that define our approach to cognitive education, and more details on the technologies we are working on.
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EDUCATE, EMPOWER, ELEVATE
Prof. Bholanath Dutta
Founder & President
MTC Global: A Global Think Tank in
Higher Education, ISO 9001: 2008
Partner: UN Global Compact I UN Academic Impact
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