Renaissance and AWS: Transforming K12 Education through Generative AI
Renaissance, a global leader in K12 educational technology, is revolutionizing personalized learning on a massive scale. With a mission to enhance learning outcomes for over 16 million students across more than 100 countries, Renaissance seeks to provide tailored educational experiences to all students, regardless of their backgrounds or abilities. To achieve this, Renaissance utilizes a data-rich platform that helps educators make informed decisions, aligning content with educational standards.
The Challenge of Personalization in Education
Personalizing learning content involves a complex yet crucial process. Each piece of content—be it math problems or reading passages—must link to specific learning objectives defined by state or national educational standards. These standards delineate what each student is expected to learn at various grades and subjects, influencing decisions made at the district and school levels.
However, with hundreds of thousands of content items to align and ever-evolving educational standards across states and countries, the task of content alignment quickly became overwhelming. Renaissance was in need of a scalable solution that could maintain both quality and expert oversight.
Partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS)
To tackle this issue, Renaissance partnered with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to create a scalable, human-in-the-loop solution powered by generative AI. This collaboration aimed to streamline the content alignment process, making it quicker without sacrificing accuracy or quality.
Building a Comprehensive Learning Ecosystem
Founded in 1986, Renaissance has evolved from offering a basic reading practice program to a full-fledged learning ecosystem. Its platform integrates core pillars: assessment, practice, instruction, and insights. This intricate web of components helps deliver personalized practice recommendations for students while providing instructional guidance for teachers and data-driven insights for administrators.
According to Julianne Robar, Senior Director of Metadata and Product Interoperability at Renaissance, the interconnected system allows them to effectively meet students at their respective learning stages. With meticulous content alignment underpinning this system, Renaissance’s experts ensure that every resource accurately corresponds to its aligned objectives derived from educational standards.
Embracing Generative AI
As Renaissance identified the potential of generative AI, they sought guidance from the AWS Generative AI Innovation Center. This initiative connects organizations with AWS experts to explore practical AI use cases and transition them into viable solutions. Jon Stelman, Director of AI Product Strategy and Innovation at Renaissance, emphasized the importance of a mature solution: “Getting something more mature was important for us,” he noted.
Through close collaboration, Renaissance and AWS strategists engaged in regular discussions, exploring innovative ideas and pathways for their AI initiatives. They also ensured thorough vetting of these projects through Renaissance’s internal Accelerate Innovation by Design (AID) committee, which evaluates AI strategies against principles for responsible development.
A Human-Centric Approach
A key aspect of Renaissance’s success was the active involvement of the content alignment experts throughout the process. By asking these users what challenges AI could address, Renaissance made sure the technology was tailored to meet real needs. Nico Tyjeski, a Generative AI Scientist at AWS, praised this approach, noting it deviates from the norm in many AI implementations, which often overlook end-user input.
Implementing the AI Solution
Over a six-month period, Renaissance, along with AWS, developed a generative AI solution designed to enhance content alignment while maintaining expert oversight. This solution builds upon Renaissance’s existing frameworks and automates one of the most tedious aspects of content mapping.
The process is quite straightforward:
- Content Submission: An expert submits a new resource, like a math problem.
- AI Analysis: The generative AI evaluates the item and produces a list of relevant learning objectives, accompanied by confidence scores for expert reference.
- Expert Review: An alignment expert assesses these suggestions before making a final decision.
- Feedback Loop: The approved data feeds back into the AI model, improving future predictions.
Robar emphasized that while the AI streamlines the process, human review remains essential because of the nuanced determinations required.
Technology Underpinning the Solution
The architecture of the solution leverages multiple AWS services, including Amazon Bedrock for generative AI models, Amazon OpenSearch Service for information retrieval, and AWS Lambda for serverless processing. These technologies seamlessly integrate to create an efficient and scalable model for content alignment.
Future Outlook for Renaissance
The generative AI solution is currently in the scaling phase and is set to roll out soon. Early feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, with alignment teams recognizing its potential to save time, potentially allowing them to focus on more intricate tasks such as content design and instructional strategy. This promises faster access to classroom-ready assessments for educators and a more tailored learning experience for students.
Renaissance’s initiatives in AI development are fostering a culture of technological adoption across the company, empowering teams to engage with AI advancements and contribute to training data. Robar noted that this ongoing engagement has encouraged other departments to explore similar opportunities within their workflows.
The Transformative Power of AI in Education
Renaissance is setting a precedent by incorporating generative AI to enhance personalized learning recommendations for students worldwide. The partnership with AWS illustrates how AI and human expertise can effectively collaborate to meet the educational needs of a diverse student population.
For those keen on leveraging technology to improve educational outcomes, Renaissance’s work is an inspiring case study on the potential of AI in K12 education.