For many parents, tutoring their children can be a challenging task. Shen Hao, a student from the College of Mathematics and Physics, together with his teammates, developed software that can help children learn. Currently, it has attracted the investment from a well-known training institution in Wenzhou City.

Screenshot of the APP

Shen Hao and his teammates were discussing the problems during software development

Inspiration from practice

Shen Hao comes from Huzhou City, and he chose to study information and computing science (teacher training pathway) in Wenzhou because of the vitality and innovation of this city. Having been enthusiastic about entrepreneurship, he continued the professional practice while seeking market demand. In the first two years, he worked as a tutor during the spare time. While tutoring the children with homework, he discovered a problem frequently encountered by primary and middle school students— they forgot knowledge points easily. "How to make them learn more comprehensively and make learning more interesting?" Since 2018, Shen Hao has thought about digital products suitable for children's learning.

This idea was also supported by his supervisor, Professor He Mingchang who encouraged him to fully explore the market demand and make innovations in combination with his major.

Multiple technologies employed for software R&D

Shen Hao founded Wenzhou Vision Space-Time Company in October that year and invited like-minded students to join it. After three years of arduous work in research and development, the software AI Notes came into being.

"This software can provide students with knowledge points, experiments, exercises, and home-school services. At the same time, it uses big data and artificial intelligence to analyze students’ learning process, problems, study time, space utilization, etc., and offers personalized recommendations, thus greatly improving the learning efficiency of students.” Zeng Chengyuan, the head of the team said. In addition to big data and artificial intelligence, they also use AR and virtual simulation technology so that students can learn through games.

Commercialization is under way

"The difficulty of learning lies in abstract thinking. My students are innovative, and use virtual simulation experiments to make abstract concepts concrete, which is conducive to the absorption of knowledge points for primary and middle school students." Professor He Mingchang praised the software after testing it. He is also helping the students find the right investor for commercialization.

At present, a well-known training institution in Wenzhou City has reached cooperation with Shen Hao’s Company. On the basis of the teachers’ offline teaching, AI Notes is employed for online tutoring. For the future, Shen Hao said that he had many ideas, including adding Chinese and English courses to the platform, expanding the user group to elementary school students. "It won't be far away. We are in the later stage of R&D." Shen Hao said.