Teachers & Educators
CENTURY Tech
An AI-powered platform that personalizes education and improves learning outcomes
Our pitch:
There are two key problems in education around the globe: Firstly, many students do not meet required standards Secondly, educators spend the majority of their time (up to 65%) on administrative tasks such as marking and data tracking. This is time that is not spent improving the quality of instruction
CENTURY is building a future of education where educators are appropriately supported to provide effective education and learners have access to a 24/7 curriculum, created for their specific and precise learning needs in every moment.
CENTURY provides genuine adaptivity and personalisation to overcome the traditional one-size-fits-all model of education that leaves so many students disengaged. As students learn on CENTURY, every click, every score, every interaction is recorded. This data feeds into artificially intelligent algorithms that learn how each individual student learns and plot the most effective route through learning material for each individual. Gaps in foundational knowledge are quickly identified and remedied, weaknesses are scaffolded and strengths built upon, with automated, constructive feedback provided at the point of need. Differentiated material is provided, based on a students focus, difficulty levels and their pace of learning, among other factors, to ensure that every learning experience is maximally effective.
By automating routine administrative tasks, such as marking, monitoring progress and generating progress reports, CENTURY relieves the administrative burden on educators. The most effective feedback provides cues and reinforcement for learners and takes place at the point of learning, so not only does CENTURY’s automarked assessments remove the pressure of marking from the teacher, it also improves the quality of learning for students. With CENTURY’s real time analysis of student performance, educators have thorough and accurate insight into their students’ learning. Easy-to-use dashboards provide instant access to detailed learning data at an individual and class level, without the usual manual data input that teachers are all too familiar with.
CENTURY can save educators up to six hours per week, allowing more time to be spent planning flexible and effective interventions. Using CENTURY, educators can quickly identify which students need further assistance and which need more challenging work, understand the trends and patterns at a class level and update their lesson plans to ensure all students are making the required progress.
The combination of providing personalised resources to every student and enabling educators to focus their energy where it is most effective can reduce achievement gaps, particularly for learners who are typically let down by the education system: those who are from disadvantaged backgrounds and those who have specific learning needs. It is a travesty that any child is left behind, but the blow is hardened when so many of these children are those who are already so vulnerable. Analysis already shows that when using CENTURY all students, regardless of their background, prior attainment or specific needs, achieve similar levels of understanding. CENTURY is helping to pave the way to a world in which every child achieves their full potential.
Watch our elevator pitch:
Where our solution team is headquartered or located:
London, UKThe dimensions of the Challenge our solution addresses:
What makes our solution innovative:
CENTURY is the first educational platform to combine artificial intelligence, pedagogical insights and cognitive neuroscience research. Rather than simply digitising the practices that already exist, we have created a platform to reinvent how we implement education, by creating new content tailored to our platform. We have crafted different solutions for different problems: for example, long-form answers cannot be auto-marked, so we ensured that CENTURY would still reduce teacher workload by allowing teachers to record their feedback and instantly send it to students. We incorporate up-to-date research into our platform and are constantly evolving in order to improve education for all.
How technology is integral to our solution:
Technology is the vehicle through which we transform education. We can only provide a personalised education through the use of technology which can tailor a course syllabus to the learning of each child - for a teacher to do this manually would be incredibly time-consuming and unfeasible. CENTURY’s artificially intelligent algorithm generates the recommended learner pathway for every student and then automarks work for the teacher. Technology also allows us to monitor and evaluate the effects of CENTURY by collecting learning data and then using it to improve the platform.
Our solution goals over the next 12 months:
Expand our AI insights to provide reliable forecasts of challenges and difficulties in a students learning.
Develop a mobile app.
Expand into more subjects across the K-12 curriculum, including geography, history, languages and early years reading.
Roll out our 1:1 subscription model, starting in Lebanon. For every school that subscribes from a developed country, we will provide free access to CENTURY for a school (or other educational institution) in a developing country.
Expand our international reach, particularly focusing on China and Hong Kong.
Our vision over the next three to five years to grow and scale our solution to affect the lives of more people:
- Develop an assessment-for-learning adaptive questioning feature, providing desirable difficulty for each student as they answer questions, optimising their learning.
Based on our predictive analytics engine and adaptive question feature, provide auto-generated content to learners, more specifically tailored to individual needs.
Reach global markets, especially North America.
Reach profitability.
Our promotional video:
The key characteristics of the populations who will benefit from our solution in the next 12 months:
The regions where we will be operating in the next 12 months:
The countries where we currently operate:
Where we plan to expand in the next 12 months:
How we will reach and retain our customers or beneficiaries:
CENTURY primarily leverages exposure at events to reach new customers. Our founder-CEO, Priya Lakhani, is an established thought leader in the area of AI in education and is frequently invited to speak at some of the biggest events in the industry. Additionally, the domain specific expertise at CENTURY is recognised with sessions led by our Cognitive Neuroscientists and expert teachers. Publications (e.g. TES, BBC) have featured CENTURY, further widening our audience. Additionally, high profile advocates discuss our platform amongst their peers. We follow up on all of these with active social media, blogging and direct marketing campaigns.
How many people we are currently serving with our solution:
95 schools (or other educational institutions) onboarded, with over 50,000 users, spanning K-12, further education and adult learning.
Since September 2017 (our official launch), over 250,000 smart recommendations have been made. These recommendations are completely personalised to each student, ensuring that they get the information they need when they need it.
Teacher’s time on CENTURY is predominantly spent setting work and reviewing learning data. Not only does the data provide deep insights to inform effective lessons and interventions, teachers save up to six hours per week on setting, marking and tracking work.
How many people we will be serving with our solution in the 12 months and the next 3 years:
We have aggressive expansion plans over the coming three years. We expect to be in over 400 schools by the end of 2019 and over 1,500 by the end of 2021.
These will be educational institutions around the world, spanning the full range of education, from early years through to continuing and adult learning. We expect learners to be benefitting from ever more personalised recommendations and adaptations; our data insights will be bolstered by AI analysis, providing educators with more at-a-glance insights, predictions and support.
How our solution team is organized:
For-ProfitExplaining our organization:
n/a
How many people work on our solution team:
20+How many years we have been working on our solution:
3-4 yearsThe skills our solution team has that will enable us to attract the different resources needed to succeed and make an impact:
CENTURY is led by a serial, social-impact entrepreneur. Sitting on our board we have several philanthropic investors, with proven track record of building and scaling companies from the ground up, including one of the co-founders of Pret a Manger.
All of CENTURY's development (content and technical) is conducted in house by domain specialists. Our developers bring expertise from finance, gaming and media. Our large team of former teachers ensures our sector knowledge and creates our top-quality resources. Finally, cognitive neuroscientists ensure that relevant research is integrated and applied to maximise success, as well as conducting original research to ensure impact.
Our revenue model:
CENTURY’s pricing is based on a per learner, per month fee in the range of 40 cents to 2 dollars (USD), dependent on institution size (we offer significant reductions for scale).
We keep costs low for our schools by providing a corporate training model. These customers pay a one-off fee to white-label the product and then typically have a revenue-sharing agreement with CENTURY.
Why we are applying to Solve:
We believe in the power of open innovation and being part of the Solve movement will help us to collaborate with other passionate organisations and grow our international exposure. We are particularly excited about the chance to connect with cross-sector leaders through the Brain Trusts initiative in order to learn how to bring our platform to the USA. Having already spoken at numerous UK education conferences, we are keen attend events in the USA. We would love to attend the Solve finals; to immerse ourselves in an atmosphere of innovation for four days and conceptualise new features for CENTURY.
The types of connections and partnerships we would be most interested in if we became Solvers:
Solution Team
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JC
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Priya Lakhani Founder and CEO, CENTURY Tech
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Ms Alice Little CENTURY Tech
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Our tagline:
An artificially intelligent platform providing personalised learning to improve learning outcomes for all, with rich data analytics to empower educators