Artificial intelligence (AI) is also creating a fresh wind in the Korean public education field. Not only edutech startups but also big tech are developing AI solutions for public education and expanding cooperation with schools. These solutions support various educational tasks such as questioning, student management, and parental counseling in the school field and serve as a reliable helper for teachers.
According to the information technology (IT) industry on the 6th, Naver launched the digital public education support system “Wale UBT” in April and installed it on the teaching and learning platform “Gwangju Ion” of the Gwangju Metropolitan Office of Education. Starting with Gwangju City, it will also promote the expansion of its introduction to other provincial offices of education. Whale UBT is a solution that can integrate and manage various test questions such as diagnostic evaluation and unit evaluation in one system. About 400,000 questions provided by four educational publishers (EBS, Genius Education, Jihaksa, and Solbuk) are equipped with a database (DB), and teachers can create customized test questions in consideration of students’ skills and have an automatic scoring function.
Until now, educational AI platforms have been quickly introduced, focusing on private education, which has relatively low entry restrictions, and in public education, individual teachers often use them. Recently, however, the introduction of the Office of Education and the school level is rapidly spreading. The development of solutions is also contributing to this trend. Beyond simply judging the noon of the problem, AI evolves into an advanced form that analyzes step by step, ensuring not only convenience but also educational effectiveness.
A prime example is Edutech startup Turing’s math learning platform, “Mathematics King.” Turing signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the National Future Education Research Association in February and began collaboration to introduce a math king in domestic schools. The math king generates a customized questionnaire for each student in one second, and AI analyzes the contents of the narrative solution of the homework. Consultation materials are automatically generated and sent to parents, and future learning directions can be shared. Park Joon-hyung, a teacher at Oral High School in Gumi, Gyeongsangbuk-do, said, “We are currently using the math king for advanced class education, and the hassle of making customized math problems has disappeared,” adding, “We are now able to manage students who are twice as close.”
AI solutions help teachers with administrative tasks as well as classes. In particular, AI took charge of writing life records, greatly reducing the burden on teachers. Since the beginning of the Generative AI craze, many teachers have used ChatGPT on their own to write their life records, but recently, solutions with enhanced convenience have been developed.
These specialized solutions also have security advantages over ChatGPT. Edutech startup Ellimants launched “Inline AI” specialized in writing life records in April. The solution does not transfer data externally by applying a local search augmentation generation (RAG) system, and AI automatically updates the contents of life records based on data from students and teachers.
Given the rapid growth of the educational AI market, the pace of introduction in the public education field is also expected to accelerate in the future. Market research firm Straits Research predicts that the global educational AI market will grow from $4.43 billion (about 6 trillion won) in 2024 to $72.45 billion (about 99 trillion won) in 2033.
[Reporter Ahn Seonje]
