We embarked on the challenge of creating Materact because we know how important maths education is. Both of us, Nacho and Andres, have been steeped in maths education over the course of our lives and have seen how it opens doors. We think this is because maths teaches us skills used in so many other areas and a willingness to think critically about the problems that confront us.
Having said this, we also know how difficult the subject can be, both to learn and teach. Maths cannot be taught through memorisation or rigid textbook explanations. You must engage actively with problems and teachers, to find understanding in a way that makes sense to you. This is why the best maths teachers are those that are able to adapt their teaching for each individual student.
Unfortunately, individual support of this kind is often difficult to find and provide. The pressure of modern school systems means that teachers rarely have time to sit one-on-one with students to check-in with their understanding. Personal tuition is an expensive alternative that prices out a large portion of students while failing to address the essential pressures that burden class teachers. It doesn’t have to be this way.
With the advent of AI over the last five years, we are presented with the tremendous opportunity to extend personalised teaching to all students. Large Language Models (LLMs) have proved to be fantastic conversational partners, able to emulate the back-and-forth that underpins good teaching practice. They are also able to draw upon large sources of data which makes them very good at producing responses to anything that you throw at them.
There is a catch, however. Generalised LLMs – such as ChatGPT – can equally confuse learning by providing completely inaccurate responses, or bypass learning altogether by providing full answers. Being able to spot these mistakes or avoid using LLMs as a replacement for real study is difficult for students still grappling with mathematical concepts. To compound the issue, LLMs fail to account for the specific requirements assessed by modern maths syllabuses. This renders them unreliable at best – and a real obstacle to learning at worst.
This is why we built Materact.
Materact is a platform designed to harness the benefits that AI has to offer in a way that promotes real learning while allaying its flaws. We have rigorously built the platform to serve both students and teachers as a true educational tool with the power to unlock personalised learning for all. Our belief is that, with Materact, everyone has the opportunity to achieve the grade that they deserve.
Read on to learn more about what we believe.
For us, Maths is foundational. We recognise the ever-increasing importance of maths education in a world where technical skills are prized above all else. This is because maths underpins so many other subjects and teaches us critical problem-solving skills. And it’s not just us that thinks this: employers and higher education institutions often look at maths grades as a key indicator of future promise. This means that the relationship that students develop with maths during their school years can have a profound impact on academic and career trajectories.
Despite the importance of maths, many school students develop a troubled relationship to the subject, often coming to the conclusion that they ‘just don’t get it’. Early frustrations and misunderstandings that could have been easily solved can cause long-term blocks on progress, since maths is a subject that builds upon previous learning. We believe that it doesn’t have to be this way. Given the right tools and approach, we know for a fact that everyone can develop their maths skills. Maths confidence is our game.
At Materact, we are motivated by the belief that everyone should be able to access the best quality maths learning and teaching resources. Educational equality is important to us and we believe that technological tools should be used to broaden success in educational attainment, rather than exacerbate inequalities. In AI we see the opportunity to increase access to the educational gold standard – one-on-one tuition.
Finally, we firmly believe that education is a fundamentally human endeavour. As such, our platform is designed to empower educators, not replace them. We believe that educational tools such as ours should be used in conjunction with classroom teaching, where students speak to real teachers who understand who they are as people, for those moments where learning isn’t confined to a syllabus. All this to say that we operate wholeheartedly in the spirit of educational partnership.
