Edtech’s AI helps universities increase their online presence •

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Contxto – Universities with limited digital infrastructure may be struggling to appeal to potential students with the coronavirus outbreak. How can they provide campus tours? Why host fairs or other events when social gatherings are to be avoided?

Unexpectedly, three-month old Argentine edtech MatchUP’s marketplace platform is giving educational institutions a place to make themselves visible and engage with prospective students through artificial intelligence (AI) and one smart search engine.

Related article: Latin American startups versus Covid-19

Edtech AI for more leads

Entrepreneurs in Argentina launched MatchUP in January of this year.

Students can use its search engine, filters, and chatbot features freely to find in-person, online, or mixed courses that suit their needs. Thanks to its AI and machine learning tech, the platform “learns” about a user as he or she navigates through the system.

It’s through this approach that the system curates its offerings based on their online behavior. Whenever interesting options are found, users can compare their options to make a decision.

MatchUP also has a chatbot feature so if they have additional questions, the system covers the educational institution on that end. And usually, starting up a conversation with a chatbot can turn into a promising lead for the school.

Meanwhile, educational institutions pay MatchUP to access admission optimization resources, qualified leads to prospective students, KPI data, among other tools to help build its digital presence. Not to mention kick start the admissions process.

It’s ultimately a marketing suite to help innovate and optimize an institutions’ operations. That way, pandemic or not, those enrollments keep rolling in.

At the moment it has 7,500 programs from 500 universities registered on its marketplace platform. Likewise, it reports it was used by over 40,000 students during the first month in which it was launched.

The future of online learning

If coronavirus has taught us anything, besides a general lack of preparedness for a global pandemic, it’s that online learning has become an attractive option to keep users engaged in learning and interacting with others.

Correspondingly, edtechs are being served a unique opportunity to push on the benefits of remote teaching.

So since they’re in the spotlight it’s a chance to make or break their models. Great experiences can lead to further growth opportunities and advocates for remote education. And that’s even after the pandemic is controlled and we go back to our everyday lives.

However, poor content quality, delays in service, and overall bad customer experience may lead to antagonists for these types of solutions.

So look alive edtechs, the opportunity is there—just don’t screw it up.

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-ML