Nectir, a Playa Vista-based education technology startup, announced a partnership with the California Community Colleges system in early October that would make Nectir’s artificial intelligence-based learning assistants available to students and staff members.
Following a year-long pilot program and research study, in which 260 instructors across 84 community colleges tested Nectir’s platform with more than 8,000 students, the platform will now be offered to more than 2.1 million students across CCC’s 116 campuses.
The education sector has been grappling with the rampant use of AI in classrooms in a major way, particularly considering platforms like ChatGPT can spit out wrong or unqualified information when uncalibrated. But Nectir’s core technology allows for large language models to comply with the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act, a set of rules companies must follow in order to protect students’ information and prevents generative AI companies from accessing student data.
‘Thoughtful step forward’
Through Nectir, educational departments and individual professors can use the large language models to create custom teaching materials. The models also feed on documents provided by the class to guide students through any questions they might have. “This pilot represents a thoughtful step forward in exploring how AI might support increases in equitable learning in a way that is scalable across our system,” Craig Hayward, the visiting executive of strategic research and innovative design at the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office, said in a statement. “The data will guide our next steps. We’re studying both the qualitative instructor and student experiences and the potential impact on quantitative outcomes like grade points earned, withdrawals, and pass rates very closely.”
The pilot expansion is another win for Nectir, which has been active in around 100 schools with more than 80,000 students outside of the state’s community college system. “Our goal is simple: give every instructor and student a safe, course-aware assistant that drives better learning outcomes,” Kavitta Ghai, co-founder and chief executive of Nectir, said.
