New WhatsApp chatbot delivers learning to your fingertips

Abhijeet Khandagale a bright school student who took great pride in creating a Newtonian reflecting telescope in 2005 to celebrate 100 years of physics in 2005 faced his first big academic failure as a secondyear engineering student ldquoI failed in many engineering subjects and had to repeat a year It was a challenging time People started ridiculing me for focusing too much on extracurricular activities I faced a significant setbackrdquo he recalledAlong with a long list of accolades the 34yearold mechanical engineer now has more than 35000 students taking tutorials from his chat bot ekatra globally ldquoIrsquom a product of a failed education system and that is why Irsquom passionate about building solutions that donrsquot let others fail in the same way Itrsquos the driving force behind my workrdquo he explainsThe chat bot attaches humorous illustrations that help understand the topic betterHis chat bot aims to break free of the conventional ways of teaching while also reaching to those who donrsquot have access to education The WhatsAppenabled technology is easy to operate and begins with a single click on a link When this writer gave it a try the first question that the chat bot asked was the topic wersquod like to begin with The options included entrepreneurship climate change or Generate AI course We opted for climate change and our course for day one began within secondsAbhijeet KhandagaleGeography is funThe first message delved into the absolute basics mdash the difference between climate and weather It read ldquoClimate is what we expect weather is what we getrdquo Mark Twain ldquoWeather is one football game climate is the history of the National Football Leaguerdquo MikeNelson247 via CC_Yale ldquoClimate tells you what clothes to buy weather tells you what clothes to wearrdquo middle school studentekatra is an AI chat bot created with the aim to break free of conventional methods of education and increase access to learningThis writer had a good laugh wondering how easy it would be to understand the phenomenon if these were the definitions that we were given instead of long jargonfilled definitions that we learned and forgot word to word in Geography classThe chat bot then went on to share illustrations to help visualise this difference followed by a 10pagelong pdf to delve deeper into the subject climate change This was complemented by a YouTube link released by the UN each simplifying terms like pollutants greenhouse gas emissions hydrologic cycle climate variability versus climate change and more The PDF has engaging trivia on every page including facts like Together electricity production transportation and industrial processes account for more than 80 per cent of the CO2 released in the atmosphere With this day one of our course terminated The AI reminded us to come back again the next day to continue the lessonsAlfred a feature in chat bot is named after superhero Batmanrsquos butler and works as a personalised tutorNo limit to learningAnother feature Alfred a GPT4 powered learning assistant allows you to generate a course depending on what you wish to study ldquoI consider myself a dreamer innovator orator researcher explorer poet and a hardcore Batman fan This last bit might seem out of place but itrsquos an integral part of who I am and has even influenced some of my workrdquo shares Khandagale adding that Alfred has been named after Batmanrsquos trusted butler ldquoAlfred is at the heart of what wersquore trying to do with ekatra It is designed to be a personalised tutor When a user starts interacting with Alfred it asks a series of questions What topic do you want to learn how do you prefer to learn it whatrsquos your current skill level in this area and in which language would you like to learn Based on these inputs Alfred creates an entire course curriculum on the fly Doctors engineers and people of all ages have used this to learn various topics One of the most interesting examples was a user who asked Alfred to teach them Japanese in Spanish Our system was able to create that course Itrsquos moments like these that show the real power and flexibility of AI in educationrdquo he explainsUsers can choose from a wide range of topics or create their own courseBut does promoting tutoring through AI pose a risk to teachers we ask ldquoThis is a crucial question and itrsquos one that I think about a lot Therersquos a lot of debate around the future of AI and its potential to replace human labour My stand on this is nuanced but fundamentally optimistic Let me give you an example from the field of education A research paper I read recently compared students who used AI tutoring systems with those who didnrsquot The students who used AI showed a 127 per cent improvement in their understanding of concepts Thatrsquos massive But herersquos the interesting part mdash when these same students went back to regular learning without AI their performance dropped by 17 per cent compared to those who never used AI at allrdquo he explains This he suggests tells us two things First that AI can be incredibly effective in enhancing learning But second and perhaps more importantly AI is most effective when itrsquos used as a tool to augment human learning not replace it entirelyLanguages to generate courses include Spanish Hindi and English among othersldquoI like to use this analogy technology is an enabler Itrsquos like a superpower If you use it as a crutch it will disable you But if you use it to empower yourself you can become a superhero just like Batmanrdquo he signs offLOG ON TO bitlyekatra001What is itEkatra is a WhatsAppbased chat bot which aims to make learning fun informative and accessible to allHow it worksThe chat bot is free to use Its feature Alfred works a personalised tutor that can generate an educational courses on any topic and in various languagesWho it affectsbenefitsThe notforprofit technology helps learners across demographics and hopes increase access to learning globally