Arist

According to LinkedIn's 2020 Workplace Learning Report, 35% of learning professionals view increasing engagement as their biggest priority, yet traditional digital learning is time-consuming, ineffective, and inaccessible. Video courses are costly and time-intensive to build, and learning does not fit in seamlessly within the flow of work, resulting in completion rates of 5% or less. Beyond corporate training, LMS and laptop access are not a given, and only 25% of the world has the high-bandwidth internet required to access digital courses.

While Arist currently focuses on the realm of corporate learning, in the long run, Arist strives to make learning as frictionless and accessible for everyone through a medium nearly everyone has access to: text messages. To date, Arist has helped hundreds of individual creators and nonprofits, governments, and companies create, launch, and assess text message courses as an innovative means to provide more equitable access to learning and development.

Although new technologies have brought profound improvements in the dimensions of efficacy and accessibility to education, these benefits are distributed disproportionately. This predicament became apparent to Arist in 2018, when Mohammad, a high school student in a war-torn Yemen, expressed the educational challenges he and his peers were facing, such as a lack of reading materials and the absence of stable internet access (which afflicts 75% of the global population). Nearly every student, however, had access to text messages (67% of people have mobile phones), and Arist quickly discovered the power of a text message education to meet learners where they are.

In corporate training, according to McKinsey's Global Survey, nearly 9 in 10 executives and managers were already witnessing a skills shortage pre-pandemic. In order to reduce the skills gap, we need systems that are adaptive in the face of rapidly changing learning needs. With our new Slack and Teams integrations, Arist equips organizations with a modular platform to create and deliver highly scalable courses to the entire digital workforce. Arist delivers bite-size learning moments that are seamlessly embedded across the tools we already use, which translates to greater adoption, completion, and engagement.

Arist is the first text-based learning platform. Inspired by research from the likes of Harvard and Stanford and the microlearning model, Arist delivers workplace training through modalities such as SMS, WhatsApp, Slack, and Microsoft Teams to achieve completion rates of over 92% and satisfaction and engagement rates 7x of traditional delivery methods. The simplicity of text messages remove many of the barriers to engagement seen in traditional learning models, and the use of short form content and repetition in coursework is optimal for reinforcement, as opposed to expecting employee retention after a single learning lesson.

For a breakdown of how Arist works, Arist partners closely with each organization to develop best practices for course creation, then helps them distribute their library of content. Once a course is uploaded to an organization's unique/white-labelled classroom, learners can sign up by choosing what time of day to receive their daily content (a 1,200-character concept/case study followed by interactive assessments), as well as which modality they want to learn on. Throughout any course deployment, organizations can track key metrics like learner progress, completion, answer accuracy, as well as generate a copy of learner responses directly inside Arist's dashboard.

Arist's vision is to serve the billions of learners around the world by providing a model of frictionless and accessible education. We truly believe that our leadership in text-based learning has the potential to dramatically lower barriers of access to learning and move the world closer to a paradigm where education can be easily exercised by everyone as fundamental right. Because Arist utilizes an existing and widespread delivery system like SMS, Arist was built to minimize educational disparities and teach parts of the world that either lack traditional means of education entirely or access to technology like computers or wifi.

Since 2018, Arist has helped individual creators as well as innovative organizations of all sizes create, deploy, and assess text-based courses with use cases ranging from disaster preparedness training to career development training (which is exactly what ServiceNow uses Arist for). Arist helps nonprofits and socially-driven organizations teach topics such as financial literacy and effective communication to underprivileged communities, as well as works with Fortune 1000 companies to provide employees with initiatives like sales and customer training.

Throughout its existence, Arist has aimed to understand the needs of people like Mohammad (outlined above), but also the stories of people like Catherine, a single mother of 2 children and a district manager for a local supermarket chain who was struggling to find time to learn. Between her commitments in raising a family and managing her employees, Catherine would regularly miss mandatory compliance training at work and could (at most) find 15 minutes daily to learn to enrich her own career development. Catherine understood the importance of learning for her career, but simply could not do so through the constraints of existing delivery methods.

The challenges that Mohammed and Catherine face are the challenges we all face, and the core question becomes: how can we meet Mohammed and Catherine where they are? Arist believes the solution to that question is text-based learning. Firstly, text is highly engaging. 95% of employees open a text within 3 minutes, which translates to response and engagement rates that are 10x of other learning mediums. Secondly, text generates real, meaningful outcomes. Stanford and Harvard research show how the use of microlearning and spaced learning models optimizes for behavior change and knowledge retention.

Thirdly, text is highly scalable. Companies can instantly reach thousands of learners in just a few clicks, even those without a laptop or LMS (5 billion people text, while 2 billion people WhatsApp). Lastly, text-based courses are fast to create. Learning designers can build courses in just a few hours (versus days for video courses) that can include interactive responses, GIFs, emojis, and more (Arist tracks course progress and engagement across multiple metrics). This leaves more time for instructional designers to focus solely on distilling the most important, relevant, and engaging information for every learner.

Here's a real Arist case study and an example of how the Thomson Foundation rapidly trained 1,200 journalists — entirely via WhatsApp. The Thomson Foundation was an early leader in online learning. They specialize in training journalists all over the world, even in countries with restricted freedom of the press. But in Sudan, ranked 175th in the 2019 World Press Freedom Index, and a territory where Thomson has been on the ground since 2012, online learning had made little headway. Why?

When Hosam — the Director of Learning at the Thomson Foundation — found Arist, he was excited at the potential of using instant messaging as another experiment in mobile training. For the past 5 years, WhatsApp has been filling the information and free media gap in Sudan. He knew that the problem was not that learners were disinterested in online education, but that the power cuts and lack of consistent WiFi made online and video-based learning inaccessible.

As COVID-19 cases were rising and a health crisis became apparent, the Sudanese government needed citizens needed to receive accurate and reliable information, and learn how to avoid spreading misinformation. UK AID provided funding in partnership with the British Council and Sudan's Ministry of Information to develop and share a course on How to Cover COVID-19 for all media in Sudan. So Hosam and his team set out to build a WhatsApp-based course on Arist. In just a few days, they created a curriculum of scenarios and interactive questions.

The metrics blew Thomson's expectations out of the water. Hosam credits this both to the medium and also to using multiple-choice questions, "getting to the heart of issues through learners interacting with questions rather than just answers."Within 1 week of the course being launched, 71% of the first 1,450 participants chose the WhatsApp option over their online and in-app LMS curriculum.

Arist's mantra is to meet learners where they are, and we believe that text-based learning is the solution to provide more affordable and equitable learning and development to the global workforce (especially those lacking connectivity). Arist has helped corporations of different industry and size deliver critical training initiatives to everyone from frontline employees to senior management, and for every client we work with we actively subsidize platform access for nonprofits in need (culminating in use cases like business training in rural Kenya). 

Arist has worked with over 50 organizations to launch courses in over 15 countries such as the United States, India, and Nigeria, and over 30 languages from Cantonese to Haitian Creole. Over 50,000 learners have taken an Arist course in use cases ranging from creative problem-solving to manager training. 

Arist is revolutionizing digital education by delivering bite-sized, digestible courses over text; first on SMS and WhatsApp, and recently on Slack and Microsoft Teams. Arist's long-term vision is the provide highly effective education to the billions of people around the world without adequate and equitable access to learning, as we recognize that education is one of the best investments that many families (especially those of lower and middle class) can make. Within 5 years, Arist hopes to have deployed a million courses to empower under-resourced communities worldwide, and what makes Arist innovative is that our method of delivery allows this vision to be achieved at an unprecedented scale yet with incredibly low costs.

In terms of business impact, Arist's innovation stems from how text message courses generate tremendous cost and time savings when compared to traditional training mediums. One Arist course day equates to 20-30 minutes of in-classroom training, which translates to 75% in time savings. Text message courses are also far cheaper to build versus video (~$1,000 vs. ~$10,000 per course). Moreover, Arist courses consistently receive higher adoption and satisfaction rates that are above 90%, and are incredibly easy to create for learning designers and can be adjusted adaptively and instantly.

As an enterprise SaaS company, all of Arist's software is deployed on AWS infrastructure; this includes the respective classrooms and dashboards of all the creators and organizations we work with. For Arist courses that run on the modalities of SMS and WhatsApp, we use Twilio's API to deliver texts to learners around the world. As Arist has recently introduced new modalities in Slack and Microsoft Teams, the Arist platform integrates directly with them to deliver text-based learning to learners within those platforms. Arist also provides a Zapier integration and can integrate with most learning management systems, but this feature is typically reserved only for our enterprise clients. 

Text-based learning generates measurably higher rates of learning satisfaction and completion that traditional mediums because of its utilization of microlearning and spaced learning. These 2 models inform how Arist provides frictionless and immediate learning and real behavior change, improved knowledge retention, and digestibility and accessibility through bite-sized, interactive, and personal content.

In "Microlearning: A Modernized Education System", a paper published in Artificial Intelligence and Neuroscience in 2016, Omer Jomah explores the advantages of microlearning. When comparing microlearning to macrolearning and traditional learning, Jomah found 82% of users rated microlearning as holistic and user-friendly. This compared to just over 50% on average for macrolearning and less than 25% for traditional learning.

Spaced learning is the practice of refreshing users of prior content over an extended period of time. In the context of text message learning, the spaced learning model also helps to explain higher rates of retention and reported satisfaction among end users. In the article "The Spacing Effect: How to Improve Learning and Maximize Retention", Farnam Street investigates the effectiveness of spaced learning to improve learner retention and understanding, specifically focusing on corporate learners, who we can presume are roughly ages 25 to 65.

“The Spacing Effect: How to Improve Learning and Maximize Retention.” Farnam Street, 31 Dec. 2018

The article focuses heavily on the forgetting curve: the rate at which learners forget things once they’ve received new information. After just an hour, learners will forget nearly 60% of delivered information. By using a spaced learning model, forgetting curves change drastically. After ten days of daily reminders, learners remember 90% of information. The author also explores recommendations for implementing spaced learning which mirror the Arist course model and how it is delivered to learners on a daily basis. 

Read more in our white paper here: https://bit.ly/3zY9ZLY

Arist is committed to upholding the highest ethical and professional standards as we scale and aim to serve millions of learners in the coming years. Although there have been minimal instances where Arist has had to moderate course content, we do have strict protocols and guidelines to ensure and maintain the trust and safety of our learners in the event that any inappropriate material is published through our platform. Because Arist predominantly works with enterprises and nonprofits and delivers their own content (that has almost always been previously evaluated and moderated), Arist rarely has to engage in content moderation of any kind.

In regards to privacy and security risks, all data is encrypted at rest using AES 256-bit encryption, and all in-transit data is encrypted using industry standard SSL. Arist is also GDPR compliant – on a high level, we allow any organization or employee to request we remove all of their data, and we have a set of internal policies and procedures to ensure compliance. Furthermore, Arist is currently in the process of acquiring SOC 2 compliance.

Current number of people Arist is serving: 50,000

Number of people Arist will be serving in 1 year: 150,000

Number of people Arist will be serving in 5 years: 5,000,000

In 1 year, Arist hopes to become the pre-eminent platform for learning in the flow of work, and become widely-used by over 50 nonprofits and 50 corporate companies and help over 150,000 learners fulfill their educational ambitions. To achieve this, Arist will continue developing thought leadership within the realm of microlearning and advocating to as many organizations as possible the potential impact and benefits of the Arist product. Because it only takes seconds for organizations to white-label our platform and less than 8 hours to create an Arist course, the potential population we can impact is extremely large.

In 5 years, Arist hopes to empower hundreds of thousands of learners to deliver high-quality training wherever they are. At this point, we will be working closely with close to 1,000 mid to large-sized organizations, each with their own white-labelled containers. To achieve such widespread adoption, we plan to use AI/ML, specifically GPT-3 to automate large portions of content creation and increase the scope of our work to an unprecedented scale. Arist has already begun experimenting with GPT-3 and is one of the earliest edtech companies to have access to the OpenAI API for GPT-3.

Arist's vision is to serve the billions of learners around the world by providing a model of frictionless, accessible, and effective education, and we continually measure and organize large amounts of course and learner data to benchmark our success. For each individual Arist classroom and white-label solution, we measure enrollment rates, completion rates, response rates, and answer accuracy on a classroom and course level. After every deployment, Arist's clients are presented with a post-deployment report sharing key metrics and insights for each cohort, and a dialogue is established to retrieve constructive criticism and feedback.

Many of Arist's clients also choose to use assessments within their actual courses to survey learners and employees and provide them with a chance to give actionable quantitative and qualitative feedback on their course experience. Arist's net promoter score is consistently above 90, with other metrics such as engagement also performing 5-10 magnitudes better than traditional learning counterparts.

13 full-time staff and 5 freelancers/contractors

We believe that one of Arist's greatest strengths is our deep-rooted commitment to helping deliver education to those who need it most. Arist is a social enterprise that actively subsidizes platform access for nonprofits in need, and all three founders came from nonprofit backgrounds before working together to start Arist.

Michael, Arist's CEO, founded TILE.org, a global entrepreneurship education nonprofit with locations in 50 countries that makes in-person conversations with leaders, innovators, and entrepreneurs accessible to students. Ryan, Arist's President, founded and ran a public speaking company where he trained international business leaders from all over the world. Maxine, Arist's COO, produced videos and delivered seminars to empower youth across Latin America and in rural parts of the United States.

Since Arist uses text-based learning to continually experiment on how to best educate learners around the world, we have troves of data of how and when learning is the most effective through a host of metrics like engagement, completion, and satisfaction. Moreover, the Arist Lyceum, a global community where leaders in learning & development gather to share insights and navigate challenges, brings unique insights to Arist towards learner tendencies, distribution bottlenecks, content moderation, etc. as the field of electronic education continues to evolve. Arist also attends premier learning conferences such as ATD and ASU+GSV Summit, and has engaged with thousands of thought leaders, learning experts and designers, academics, EdTech CEOs, and learners.

Arist is committed to fostering, cultivating and preserving a culture of diversity, equity and inclusion. It takes a village to bring Arist's vision to life. Diversity and Inclusion are more than just words to us — they're an active choice we make to improve this company and make it a home for everyone on our team. We want to make learning accessible to everyone in the world — and when we say everyone, we mean everyone.

All employees of Arist have a responsibility to treat others with dignity and respect at all times. All employees are expected to exhibit conduct that reflects inclusion during work, at work functions on or off the work site, and at all other company-sponsored and participative events. All employees are also required to complete annual diversity awareness training to enhance their knowledge to fulfill this responsibility.

Arist is applying to the 2021 Digital Workforce Challenge because we believe we would greatly benefit from Solve's community of members and larger network as we continue to stoke our reputation in the United States. Solve's deep roots within social impact would also dramatically aid Arist's efforts in driving more equitable participation in the digital workforce.

One of the largest barriers Arist will encounter in the foreseeable future will be increasing the exposure of organizations to text-based learning and its overall legitimacy. Arist believes that Solve's renowned reputation and efforts within social impact innovation will serve as a foundational launching pad to increase awareness about the effectiveness of text-based learning.

Arist also believes that Solve can provide the necessary strategic guidance in terms of circumventing operational and technical hurdles that we may encounter as we scale. Solve's vast network of operating partners will allow Arist to access unique experience and expertise in the areas of such as technical infrastructure, customer service, content support, etc.

A large majority of Arist courses are deployed for learners within the United States, and for many of our courses that are deployed internationally, they are almost always deployed in the United States first. Arist also has several courses deployed to learners in India, but we are planning a more aggressive expansion into India in the coming year. Arist actually deploys a career development course called 'Own Your Career' to ServiceNow employees in the United States. 

As Arist's ultimate goal is the provide more effective and accessible education to learners around the world, we believe that a partnership with ServiceNow will the accelerate the pace in which we can meet that goal. Although ServiceNow is already one of Arist's customers and uses our platform to deploy career development courses for its employees, we believe that a formal partnership through the 2021 Digital Workforce Challenge will enhance our cooperation and be invaluable in terms of not only the increase in capital but also with various in-kind resources that may be at our disposal.

Arist believes that ServiceNow, with its reach all over the U.S. and in over 30 countries worldwide, can provide resources and guidance to aid our international expansion efforts in the coming year. Additional support through corporate media highlights would also allow us to continue to expand our reach across the software sector domestically.

Arist would love to partner with organizations like the United Nations and the American Red Cross. Similar organizations could use the Arist platform to streamline the creation and distribution of their essential content to aid other nonprofits, which is an especially pertinent use case for the United Nations. We believe we could add the most value to partners which already have a large, distributed workforce, as Arist's core value proposition is the ability to impact large populations at once with low cost.