Kolkata: A new chatbot launched by MyPrivateTutor, a leading online marketplace for tutors are helping students find tutors in India. The bot ‘chats’ with the user asking a series of questions about his learning needs before producing a personalised list of recommended tutors from over 200,000 tutors registered on the platform offering tutoring on over 500 different subjects. The chatbot is named ‘Tora’ which can be accessed both via the company’s website http://www.myprivatetutor.com as well as on Facebook Messenger by typing myprivatetutor.
“Chatbots provide an intuitive way for students to find answers to their questions and get help. While messaging is almost second nature to today’s youth, we are seeing that even their parents are far more comfortable interacting with a messaging system than with an app or website,” said Sandip Kar, CEO and Co-Founder of MyPrivateTutor.
MyPrivateTutor is based in Kolkata that matches tutors to students using proprietary machine-learning algorithms. While demand for tutors of school-level subjects is at a rise, the startup sees healthy demand for tutoring in categories such as college subjects, test preparation, languages, programming and after-school activities.
With the development of AI platforms like IBM Watson, the number of chatbot applications has exploded in the last year but there have been relatively few used cases in the education domain, barring the odd language learning apps.
“There is a huge scope of using AI for personalising education. In addition to using machine learning for better matching of students to tutors, we are also working on building tools for customising lessons for each individual student. A chatbot for helping with homework is also on the cards,” said Anindya Kar, Co-Founder of MyPrivateTutor.
Students already use messaging apps like Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp to form study groups, discuss upcoming tests and exchange thoughts and ideas about their courses. Chatbots can leverage this to make the learning experience more effective and personalised.
