More than 100 universities and high schools are turning to a new AI tool called Nectir, which lets teachers create personalized learning partners trained on syllabi, textbooks, and assignments to ask questions related to coursework. You will be able to support your students from writing to essay writing. and future career guidance.
The company announced a $4 million seed funding round on Thursday, bringing its total funding to $6.3 million. The new capital will be used to develop new features and expand the team.
The continuing teacher shortage is making it increasingly difficult for educators to provide individualized, one-on-one feedback to all students. Kavitta Ghai, the brains behind Nectir, witnessed this problem while attending the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB).
“Everyone I was talking to no longer understood the value of a college education, and we're seeing that right now across the country,” Guy told TechCrunch. “The education we're providing has no value. It's not modern. It's not going to set them up for career success.”
Additionally, Guy has academic challenges. “I'm autistic and I also have ADHD, so no classroom I've ever been in has ever felt comfortable or safe for me or my brain,” she said.
Ghai and co-founder Jordan Long (CTO) decided to create Nectir, a 24/7 chatbot that provides ongoing support and assistance to students at any time.
Nectir allows teachers to create AI assistants tailored to the specific needs of a single class, department, or entire campus. A variety of personalization options are available, allowing teachers to set clear boundaries for AI interactions, such as programming the assistant to only help with specific subjects or respond in a way that fits their teaching style. Masu.
Image credit: Nectir
In a TechCrunch demo, Ghai used the example of the Calculus AB Course Assistant, which provides study tips, assignments, and course-related questions to students. The AI was specifically trained to interact with students by providing support rather than completing their assignments. They were also instructed to use the Socratic method, which involves asking a series of questions and guiding students to independently find the final answer.
The most notable thing about Nectir is that you can limit where the AI collects information. Users can define the level of access the assistant has to the language model (LLM). In this case, the language model is OpenAI's GPT-4o.
Nectir's General Knowledge option gives your assistant full access to ChatGPT, allowing them to retrieve a wide range of information. The 'Topic Knowledge' option, on the other hand, limits the AI to only retrieve the most relevant information based on the specific topic uploaded by the user.
The “Documents Only” option restricts the AI to extracting information only from the data provided by the user. We do not access information from ChatGPT. This is especially beneficial for educators creating things like financial aid assistants, as ChatGPT is known to give illusory answers, increasing the accuracy and relevance of information.
“The unique systems we have built on the backend are not just for use. [retrieval augmented generation]. We first let the AI retrieve from the document uploaded by the teacher, and then allow the AI to retrieve from the LLM as needed. But that's how we first refined the hallucination to make the LLM inaccessible. Data from teachers will go into a much smaller pool,” Guy said. She claims Nectir has an accuracy rate of over 95%.
Nectir has a disclosure at the bottom of the chat warning that the AI can make mistakes. Users can also rate their answers at the bottom to let the platform know if the question was answered correctly.
The introduction of generative AI technology in education settings has raised concerns, but educators are concerned about how the technology is evolving, especially given the widespread use of tools like ChatGPT for cheating. We are becoming increasingly aware of the need to understand the
In particular, Nectir allows teachers to monitor interactions to see exactly how students are using the tool and ensure that the AI is providing support without simply giving answers. can. The analytics dashboard also allows teachers to see insights such as which students are using it the most and for how long.
In addition to concerns about fraud, many currently available AI tools are not compliant with privacy laws such as the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), which protects personal information in education, making them unsuitable for use in schools. is not suitable. record. Nectir claims its AI protects student privacy and complies with FERPA standards.
“There was nothing available for LLM in a FERPA compliant manner…[With Nectir,] None of this [student] Information is sent back to LLM. We built this specifically for educational institutions to use because we have our own private endpoint powered by Azure,” said Ghai.
Image credit: Nectir
The company's recent round was led by Long Journey Ventures, with participation from Behind Genius Ventures, Entrada Ventures, and Precursor Ventures. The company previously raised $2.3 million in pre-seed funding.
Nectir will use the funding to build a second version of its product, including a new “sentiment analysis” feature. This tool analyzes student conversations and provides insight into student strengths, weaknesses, and whether there is room for improvement. Additionally, it suggests classes for students to consider next semester and outlines potential career paths. This feature is currently being tested in several schools and will be widely rolled out in the coming months.
“It will truly be a customized learning partner. Every conversation a student has with the assistant will be captured in their student profile, and the AI will know what the AI is thinking, not only about the educational process, but also what to do next. “It will allow students to see my career journey,” Guy said.
Founded in May, Nectir already serves more than 80,000 students at more than 100 schools, including Boston University, Los Angeles Pacific University, Questrom School of Business, Stanford Business School, and UCSB.
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