Delivering Personalized Needs-Based Learning at Scale with EnGen’s Dr. Katie Nielson

IT Visionaries

The way we learn is no longer unilateral. So why act as if still one teacher, standing in front of a group of students lecturing them on a particular subject is the best way for them to learn a second language? Instead of teaching simple words or phrases such as bike, or car, what if the focus was on developing the skills that actually help people advance their careers?

“The old way of teaching, where you teach the same thing to everybody — teacher in front of the room, using a textbook that gets purchased — no one thinks that's a good way of doing it. Good teachers actually go out and try to find supplemental materials that were interesting to their students. They look for news articles, or short stories, or something, but they can't take all that content and curate it and deliver it to learners. It's impossible for humans to do that. However, machines are really good at doing that. When I realized that was the very best way to teach learners, I decided to try to use computers for what technology can do best, to let people do what teachers do best.”

That’s Dr. Katie Nielson, who earned her PhD in the school of languages from the University of Maryland in 2013, where her research focused on technology-mediated language training. Katie has dedicated her career to making language learning more accessible and now, as the CEO and founder of Voxy EnGen, she’s using technology to deliver high-quality needs-based instruction to immigrants and refugees.

On this episode of IT Visionaries Katie, dives into why the way we teach language in the states is a broken process and how to fix it. She also explains how her platform is delivering personalized learning at scale to those that need it most. Enjoy!

Main Takeaways

• If There’s A Problem, Fix it: When you’re developing a solution to a problem, you have to think about how your solution can be applied across different verticals. This means taking time to research the various options you have when it comes to getting your product to market, but also thinking about what your unique identifier is.
• A Barrier to Success: English is often what holds workers back from succeeding at their jobs. Instead of non-English speakers having to go to class in order to advance their linguistic skills, they should be able to do that on their own time with a program that teaches them the basics, but real-world scenarios based on their jobs to help them improve.
• Setting a Baseline: When you’re developing any kind of algorithm or personalized experience, the first thing you have to identify and establish is a baseline for your measurement. This is how you identify the areas where someone needs to grow, but it also can be used as a tool to identify how far a user has come with your program.

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