Like many tutoring services across Calgary, Tutred has seen a spike in registration in the nearly three weeks since teachers across Alberta went on strike.
Different from other tutoring services, Tutred uses AI to help with on-demand tutoring and a system that automates 95 per cent of teachers’ overhead.
The Calgary-based start-up instantly connects students to a tutor. Founder and CEO Mo Falleh says the company is like Uber, but for tutors, where in the click of a button, students can speak with a live, knowledgeable tutor.
Falleh said the AI model saves tutors hours each week, cutting the time that goes into preparing lesson material. On top of automating a portion of lesson planning, tutoring sessions feature a built-in AI co-tutor called Luna.
“Basically, Luna is retaining the entirety of the lesson’s transcript and then auto-generating lesson material that a tutor can summon to the student’s screen,” Fellah said.
“Let’s say I just spent 20 minutes describing how to solve quadratic equations and I needed a problem to either reinforce my students’ learning, or gauge how well they understood the concept I was teaching. Luna would recognize the need to generate a problem, and then it would preview it for us.”
Outside of live lessons, Luna builds individualized student learning profiles, categorizing their strengths, weaknesses and learning gaps.
Tutors can use Luna to auto-generate lesson plans associated with upcoming lessons and generate homework post lessons.
“A lot of tutors often will spend the first half hour trying to figure out where (the student is) or there will be some correspondence back and forth to kind of identify that, so this helps eliminate that,” Fellah said.
The increased demand for tutors has been hyper-beneficial, Fellah said.
“This is a very interactive process when it comes to continuing to improve your product and capturing learnings from your users and whatnot. It’s good that a lot of users have kind of spiked and whatnot, but it also means our learnings are abundantly more,” he said.
“There’s all these key learnings that we have that we can inform the product development cycle and continue on that mission of building the best possible product.”
Tutred was ranked a top 10 startup in Calgary by Platform Calgary ahead of Innovation Week.
Conference highlighting technology coming to Calgary in early November
Platform Calgary is more than a parkade, said Interim-CEO Jennifer Lussier, as the company plans for Innovation Week. Calgary-based startups like Tutred make up the Calgary’s Launch Party Top 10, as the most promising early-stage startups.
Finalists like Tutred are profiled during Calgary Innovation Week, including a live pitch on stage.
Fellah called the opportunity a very cool milestone.
“We’re really grateful for Platform Calgary and the support we’ve received from them, not just with the launch party, but even through the programming that they offer,” he said.
“I can’t speak highly enough of what Platform has done for our growth, visibility and momentum.”
Attending Innovation Week is an important way to support the city’s startups, Lussier said.
“I think just getting involved, trying to come to an event, checking out innovation week, it’s free,” she said.
“We have a ton of innovators and problem solvers and builders here, and they’re just looking to solve problems in our own backyard. It’s a community of people that take risks, so just give them a try.”
