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From Hours to Minutes: Cathoven AI's Role in Reducing Teacher Prep
Cathoven AI, a startup dedicated to enhancing English teaching, has developed an AI tool that analyzes text difficulty, adjusts test questions, and generates teaching materials based on student proficiency within minutes. Previously, teachers spent over 10 hours weekly on lesson preparation, a process now streamlined by the AI to mere minutes.
Professors at Columbia University and UC Berkeley are currently using this system, and it has also been featured in several academic papers.
How did Cathoven AI attract these renowned university professors?
Transforming Education: CEFR Analysis and Personalized Lesson Planning
Differences in student proficiency pose challenges for lesson preparation, which is where CEFR analysis tools prove indispensable by delving into vocabulary and sentence structure.
Cathoven AI's team members have extensive experience in English teaching, educational technology, and business operations. The CEO Erdi Tac (far right in the first image) possesses a deep understanding of language learning and a background in self-taught AI. He is a former English teacher who envisioned democratizing English education through AI and specialized in AI-driven language learning during college, gaining practical teaching experience at language centers in China.
Co-founder Summer G. Long (second from the left in the first image) was a star teacher at a major language tutoring center in China. She also contributed to English teaching and curriculum development at New Oriental Education & Technology Group.
Chief Operating Officer and co-founder Josh Lee (far left in the first image) brings entrepreneurial expertise from previous roles at ByteDance. Josh emphasizes the pivotal role of AI in personalized education and also has experience in event management, marketing, and education.
"We found in interviews with Japanese school teachers that because students have different levels of proficiency, teachers need to first analyze the difficulty of the text, then replace the words in the text with vocabulary suitable for the students' English proficiency levels, requiring 10 hours per week to prepare lessons," said Josh Lee. "But with our tool, teachers can prepare lessons in less than a minute."
How Does Cathoven AI Innovate Education with Personalized AI Solutions?
Cathoven AI uses CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages), adopted by international English proficiency tests such as TOEIC, TOEFL, and IELTS, as a basis for difficulty grading. By inputting the text into the tool, Cathoven analyzes the sentence structure, difficulty of each word, and more, enabling teachers to quickly understand the text's difficulty.
"In the past, although there were other text difficulty analysis tools, we are the first to analyze vocabulary in depth," said Josh Lee. Cathoven AI directly lists the difficulty of each word in the text, allowing teachers to accurately see the distribution of word difficulty in the text, select students suitable for reading the text, and export word tables directly from the tool to provide students with supplementary teaching materials.
Combining data from globally renowned institutions and user data, Cathoven AI adjusts and updates models to improve accuracy.
In addition to difficulty analysis, Cathoven AI also helps teachers customize tests, adjust text difficulty, and more, not only reducing teachers' preparation time but also providing students with teaching materials that better meet their needs.
Transforming Learning Experiences: AI's Role in Education Growth
In addition to analysis tools, brand management is also crucial for Cathoven AI. "The education industry places great importance on brand credibility," said Josh Lee. Cathoven AI has been adopted in multiple academic papers and won the Silver Award for AI Education at the 2023 QS Reshaping Education Awards.
Academic adoption and recognition at the QS Awards have enabled Cathoven AI to accumulate approximately 14,000 individual users and over 20 corporate users through natural growth. Josh Lee also stated that the team will continue to cultivate the brand in the future, enhancing brand credibility and visibility.
Future plans include opening up student-side usage, becoming a student-exclusive "AI tutor." stated Erdi Tac.
Currently, Cathoven AI's tools are divided into free and paid versions based on functionality, charging users a monthly subscription fee that varies by region and offering customized subscription plans for enterprises.
In the future, Cathoven AI plans to open up student-side functionality so that students can use AI tools to assist their learning. "Our goal is to become a student-exclusive AI tutor, providing customized courses for students," said Josh Lee.
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