Students have adopted generative artificial intelligence tools very quickly in their daily lives, although their use in the school environment is proving to be very controversial. Stud-IA brings a kinder and more responsible vision of these technologies, turning GenAI into a sort of private tutor and a training application to prepare different subjects.
Carlos Dodero, co-founder and CO-CEO of the project, talks to Neosmart about what possibilities it currently offers and what new features are being prepared for the next course.
- How did STUD-IA come about?
- Stud-IA came about a year ago, when one of the founders was combining the last year of his degree with a job. He felt that he didn't have time to study and it was then when we saw that it could be a recurring problem for many students in similar or even different circumstances, but who needed extra support to optimize their study time.
- What functionalities and tools do you offer to students?
- Currently, Stud-IA offers different resources that are easy to generate in three simple steps. By uploading the content you have to study, Stud-IA provides you with summaries, concept maps, flashcards and a series of practical resources to test yourself. Quizzes, true/false and development tests are the three resources that Stud-IA offers you to test yourself with the subject you are studying.
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All this in a very simple interface, which gives you the facility of automatic correction, instant feedback and, in the case of development exams, makes corrections as if you were a teacher. But, soon, we will be launching new functionalities on these resources that will surprise people.
- How does Dodi, the chat that accompanies the platform, work? What can it solve?
- Dodi accompanies you through each of the platform's resources and is able to resolve any doubts you may have about the content generated and the content uploaded by the user. Dodi solves complex concepts by simplifying them so that the user can understand them more easily.
In addition, it explains why you have failed in the questions you have wrong in the practical part, helps you connect with your study content as if it were your private teacher, answering all the doubts that the user has about the syllabus.
- What are the new features you have recently introduced?
- Our goal is to create a platform for all students, so with the feedback of many users we have been optimizing the performance and quality of the resources we offer, as well as adding features that facilitate the user experience within Stud-IA.
All this in a very simple interface, which gives you the facility of automatic correction, instant feedback and, in the case of development exams, makes corrections as if you were a teacher. But, soon, we will be launching new functionalities on these resources that will surprise people.
- How does Dodi, the chat that accompanies the platform, work? What can it solve?
- Dodi accompanies you through each of the platform's resources and is able to resolve any doubts you may have about the content generated and the content uploaded by the user. Dodi solves complex concepts by simplifying them so that the user can understand them more easily.
In addition, it explains why you have failed in the questions you have wrong in the practical part, helps you connect with your study content as if it were your private teacher, answering all the doubts that the user has about the syllabus.
- What are the new features you have recently introduced?
- Our goal is to create a platform for all students, so with the feedback of many users we have been optimizing the performance and quality of the resources we offer, as well as adding features that facilitate the user experience within Stud-IA.
In our latest update we have increased the size of the document that Stud-IA accepts to generate resources. In addition, we have increased the number of flashcards, quiz and true/false questions from 10 to 20 per generated resource. We have also improved the quality of the summaries and the way they are presented to the user, offering a cleaner and more organized way. And well, for the next update there will be new features that students are going to love, all thanks to how collaborative our users and community are.
- Can't some of these things you offer already be done with big language models like ChatGPT or Copilot? What is your added value compared to them?
- Yes, but no. Many of the resources we offer can be created with the big language models like ChatGPT or Copilot. After all, they are very powerful tools trained for a long time with a large amount of data. We could say that large language models are one of the ingredients of Stud-IA's recipe, and of more and more companies. But as we all know, it is not easy for the vast majority of people to find the right prompt, or even iterate with ChatGPT, for example, to get the result they are really looking for.
From Stud-IA we have been working for months to shape this type of models, combining them with other technologies and adapting them to our users. In this way, with just three simple steps, they can generate a series of resources that would possibly take a long time to achieve using large language models such as ChatGPT or Copilot. In addition, in our interface they can use automatic correction and feedback with a simple click, among many other things.
Stud-IA has been optimized little by little, readjusting parameters to improve the results since we started with the prototype. Very elaborate logics have been implemented by the technical team, necessary for the user to simply upload his content and all the resources are generated with quality. Now, with the documents uploaded to Stud-IA, it is much easier to train the AI, as we have varied content that helps to significantly improve the results we offer within Stud-IA. But at the beginning, it was not an easy task to optimize.
- How do you solve the possible hallucinations of your AI when doing summaries, concept maps or tests?
- We work many hours a day to predict LLM behaviors through various processes in order to anticipate the possible errors they may cause. Our technical team has experience with this type of models, we consider this is key to eradicate or at least predict more quickly those anomalies.
At Stud-IA we prepare the AI for specific cases, such as the creation of the resources we offer on the platform. In addition, for months we have been working intensively on prompts engineering to understand how AI works and how it facilitates responses.
- Does your platform host the data or notes uploaded by students?
- Yes, in our databases we host the notes uploaded by the students. This makes it easier for us to optimize our resources with all kinds of documents uploaded by users.
- How do your Studokens tokens work, what is their price and how are they spent?
- Studokens are the virtual currency within Stud-IA that users consume for resource generation and the questions they ask Dodi. Currently, we are giving away 100 Studokens to each person who registers so that they can enjoy our tool at no cost.
Our commitment to quality education for all has led us to optimize our spending as much as possible in order to be able to offer very competitive prices to Stud-IA users. Once the 100 Studokens welcome gift is used up, users can buy more. We have options of Studokens packages to suit the needs and be affordable to all users.
- How many users does STUD-IA currently have, and do you have more users in certain careers or educational paths?
- Stud-IA currently has more than 900 users worldwide. The vast majority of these are university students, but we also have students from high school, vocational training and even professional training. Most of them come from theoretical careers, although we also have users studying practical careers.
- What can we expect from STUD-IA as a startup in the medium term?
- Stud-IA, in the medium term, is going to focus on improving as much as possible the functionalities offered. Currently, in Spain with the conclusion of final exams in both universities and schools, it will be a low time for us. This will give us a lot of time to work on several new functionality projects and on optimizing existing functionalities, to have them available for all users when the academic year starts in September.
On the other hand, we are working and about to close possible collaboration agreements for the implementation of disruptive technologies that reinforce our added value. Our goal is to have a very robust tool that not only serves to help the direct customer, but also provides educational institutions with a new way of continuous assessment and a tool that simplifies the study sessions of their students.
- As a startup dedicated to education and AI, how do you expect GenAI to change the industry in the medium term? How do you see its future in 3 years' time?
- At the speed at which generative artificial intelligence languages are developing and improving, it is difficult to draw conclusions with a view to a 3-year future, as every few years there is more and more development and many additional improvements. Whenever you think that they cannot be surpassed, a new release comes along that leaves you speechless. From Stud-IA, what we do and will continue to do is to always be aware of new developments, do a lot of research and try to implement the improvements as quickly as possible without losing quality.
However, it is clear that generative languages will continue to change not only the daily tasks of all people, but also the software of companies, SaaS, etc.
