Description

Brief Description

In this talk, we will explore the intersection of AI, Learning Engineering, and Educational Data Mining, sharing practical insights from a real-world edtech impact story. We will discuss Learning Engineering, the systematic approach to continuously improving digital learning outcomes, and go through some examples and tools. Next, we will explore Educational Data Mining’s crucial role in transforming learning data into actionable insights, showing how human centered design of effective data visualizations and analytics drive targeted interventions and decision making on the ground. We will then discuss AI, which has become an “everything sauce” in edtech products these days, and how the approach to building intelligent tutoring systems has changed over time. Lastly, we will discuss how these fields synergize, drawing on a case study from India’s Rajasthan state, which uses the Smart Paper AI system for digitalizing the competency-based assessments process for 5 million students, helping 300,000 teachers.

Date and Time: Saturday,August 23 , 2025, 6:30 pm to 7:30 pm (IST)

Pre- Requisite(s): None

Target Audience: Researchers, Practitioners, Designers, Engineers

Key Objective(s):

Showcase tools for Learning Engineering (UpGrade, ReSource) 

Showcase real world AI edtech tool with massive scale and impact (Smart Paper) 

Discuss how to design scalable and effective edtech tools

Instructor:

Nirmal Patel

CEO, Smart Paper, Gandhinagar, Gujarat

Brief Bio / About the instructor:

Nirmal Patel is an EdTech entrepreneur and researcher. He is the CEO of Smart Paper, an edtech startup focused on using AI to connect paper and digital, and Chief Data Scientist at Playpower Labs, a leading edtech R&D lab. Nirmal’s research is centered around combining learning engineering, AI, and educational data mining to create effective and engaging edtech products and systems. He has published over 10 research papers on learning technologies at venues like ACM CHI, Journal of Educational Data Mining, and Journal of Computer Assisted Learning. Nirmal’s research group is also a two-time winner of the Learning Engineering Tools Competition and a recipient of research grants to advance the state of the art of edtech. His research has won awards at the Intelligent Tutoring Systems conference, IEEE, and ACM CHI. Nirmal’s Smart Paper project has been recognized by UNESCO and the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) for its massive impact on 5 million students in India’s Rajasthan state.

Instructor’s LinkedIn Profile Link:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/nirmalpatelai/