Alelo’s Enskill platform illustrates the role of cloud-based cognitive services in establishing learning technology ecosystems
NOV 14, 2017
Alelo’s CEO and co-founder Dr. Lewis Johnson spoke this week at Stanford University’s mediaX symposium on Innovation Ecosystems for AI-Based Education, Training, and Learning. Dr. Johnson offered insights on the topic of cloud-based cognitive services and their role in accelerating the development of AI-based learning products and digital ecosystems.
Alelo’s cloud-based Enskill® platform for learning and assessment serves as a case in point. Alelo has created AI-based learning products since its inception and achieved considerable success in developing learning products for government customers, and has now moved to a cloud-based platform to greatly accelerate adoption and spur innovation.
Enskill delivers speech-driven role-play simulations to Web browsers on desktop computers, tablets and smartphones. It utilizes cloud-based speech recognition and natural language processing technology to deliver personalized learning interactions in scenarios that simulate real life. Cloud-based cognitive services were critical to the development of Enskill and accelerated its adoption. Pilot evaluations with English language learners started in Thailand and Chile in April of this year. Enskill is now quickly expanding globally, with Enskill servers on four continents and users in 10 countries. By early next year Alelo expects to have students using Enskill in 25 countries.
“Alelo creates learning solutions that help people acquire new skills and apply them when it counts, changing the way people communicate.”
Enskill servers collect volumes of learner data, which makes possible a new data-driven approach to instructional design. The system serves both as a learning tool and a data collection tool, and the collected data are used to retrain the AI models and iteratively improve the design. For example, when the trial in Thailand began, Enskill had no model of the common errors made by Thai learners of English. The data collected from the trial were used to create such a model, and Enskill now recognizes errors commonly made by Thais and provides appropriate feedback to optimize learning.
Technical and organizational barriers still slow the adoption of cloud-based services, but this provides opportunities for innovators to move quickly and occupy the high ground in the emerging digital-learning landscape. For Enskill that high ground is competency-based learning and assessment using Alelo’s virtual role-play technology. Alelo is providing this capability as a component of other digital learning products, and thus plays a key part in the emerging digital learning ecosystem.
Alelo is currently raising capital to further expand the global reach of the Enskill platform. For more information go to flashfunders.com/alelo.
