This article explores the definition and evolution of AI, its applications in education, and the role of AI, particularly in K-12 education. It discusses the founding of Riiid, an AI-driven educational technology company, and its journey in the education sector, with a focus on the TOEIC market in South Korea.

In a groundbreaking move on September 20, 2022, Lasell University's President, Michael B. Alexander, announced an extraordinary 33% reduction in tuition, room, board, and fees, signaling a pivotal shift in higher education. Situated in an affluent Boston suburb, Lasell, a venerable 170-year institution, is taking a bold step to enhance transparency and affordability in response to the perennial escalation of college costs. This historic decision aims to recalibrate the value proposition of a college degree, attracting a more diverse student body, and challenging the prevailing narrative of spiraling tuition rates nationwide. The impact of this unprecedented policy shift is not confined to Lasell alone but reverberates through the broader landscape of American higher education, prompting a critical reassessment of the cost and value dynamics of pursuing a college education.

In August 2021, the founders of upGrad, the latest unicorn in the Indian higher education online space, were deciding how to best use the funds to execute on their ambitious growth plans. Ronnie Screwvala, Mayank Kumar and Phalgun Kompalli had envisioned upGrad as an online education platform to enable working professionals to access university degrees from around the world. The pandemic induced lockdowns that confined millions to their homes due to COVID-19, supercharged the growth of upGrad, and indeed all online higher education providers, leading to both growth and competition. The founders of upGrad were keen to ensure they would continue to be a winner in the evolving sector-but which route should they prioritize? Should upGrad continue to focus on offering academic credentials through university partnerships to working professionals, or strengthen their position in the college learners (aged 18 to 23) segment by offering job-oriented test prep and bachelor's degrees?

Educators and entrepreneurs alike are excited about the potential for artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to change the way learning will look like in the future. There is a confluence of factors such as the availability of large sources of rich, granular data; fast connectivity; powerful processing capabilities at a lower cost; and the ubiquity of mobile devices driving the imagination of entrepreneurs who are envisioning a world powered by AI to change the way learning should happen. One of the exciting companies to emerge in this field is Liulishuo. Founded in 2012, Liulishuo operates mobile apps for English speaking practice and uses AI technologies to power personalized, adaptive learning experience. Co-founder Wang Yi and his colleagues believe that AI technologies could be a disruptive force in every aspect of English learning, including proficiency improvement and test preparation. They believe that AI technology could benefit English learners around the world and make everyone a global citizen.

Summit Public Schools was a very successful charter management organization with schools in California and Washington State. The students came from a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds, many from economically-disadvantaged households. While nearly all of its students were accepted to a four-year college, Summit's leadership discovered that nearly half of graduates had failed at college. This was unacceptable to Summit's leadership and they set out to create a new learning model that would enable its students to not only get into a four-year college but succeed there. The new learning model significantly altered the role of the teacher and brought technology to the forefront of student teaching. This new personalized student self-directed learning model was instituted to build knowledge and skills graduates needed to be successful in college. The case study describes the history of Summit and its evolution to this new learning model.

The online virtual learning (K-12) industry in 2017 remains an industry moving fast with many different players and stakeholders. While online virtual learning is beginning to make its way into school districts, it is far from being mainstream and a long way from full adoption. One company - Connections Education - is at the forefront of the movement. The case provides information on the company and the industry (historical and current as of 2017) and introduces the challenges the company faces in its quest to create a better way of learning for all students.

In 2013, Brett Peiser, CEO of the charter school management organization (CMO) Uncommon Schools, is reassessing the non-profit's strategy. For nearly 10 years, Uncommon had fulfilled its mission to bring high-quality education to students in low-income, urban areas using a "network of networks" structure, where regional networks of charter schools operated independently, guided by Uncommon's shared beliefs and practices. The autonomy built into the structure had allowed teachers and school leaders to develop innovative and effective practices that could then be rolled out throughout the network. But in the 2012-2013 school year, this strategy comes into question when students take the first standardized test aligned with the more rigorous Common Core State Standards. While the test results show that, on average, Uncommon's students still perform well compared to their district peers, they also reveal a disparity in achievement across the schools and regions. The case gives students the opportunity to assess the benefits and challenges of Uncommon's strategy so far, determine the best way to address the inconsistency in academic achievement, and consider the best way to consistently scale excellence.

In 2013, Brett Peiser, CEO of the charter school management organization (CMO) Uncommon Schools, is reassessing the non-profit's strategy. For nearly 10 years, Uncommon had fulfilled its mission to bring high-quality education to students in low-income, urban areas using a "network of networks" structure, where regional networks of charter schools operated independently, guided by Uncommon's shared beliefs and practices. The autonomy built into the structure had allowed teachers and school leaders to develop innovative and effective practices that could then be rolled out throughout the network. But in the 2012-2013 school year, this strategy comes into question when students take the first standardized test aligned with the more rigorous Common Core State Standards. While the test results show that, on average, Uncommon's students still perform well compared to their district peers, they also reveal a disparity in achievement across the schools and regions. The case gives students the opportunity to assess the benefits and challenges of Uncommon's strategy so far, determine the best way to address the inconsistency in academic achievement, and consider the best way to consistently scale excellence.

BYJU'S The Learning App (BYJU's) is India's largest K-12 education app with about 300,000 annual paid subscribers. The mobile app uses a mix of video lessons and interactive tools to personalize learning for every student. Although there is room to grow exponentially in India, BYJU's decides to enter the U.S. and other English speaking international markets. It believes that United States has a large demand for "better learning", a strong digital payment infrastructure and a willingness to pay subscription fees. At the same time, winning in U.S.'s education market where most students attend public schools and many ed-tech companies are proliferating is challenging. Is it wise to expand to the U.S., even though India presents such a vast untapped opportunity with so many students in need?

The case explores Hadi Partovi's mission to provide every K-12 student in the United States the opportunity to learn computer science. Students can assess how Partovi transformed his passion into an organization that reached millions around the globe through the launch of not-for-profit, Code.org, and its well-known awareness building event entitled "The Hour of Code." The case provides students the opportunity to consider the organization's multi-faceted approach, its team, and partnerships strategy. A particular focus is on the path taken by this relatively young social enterprise to address issues of scalability and sustainability.

IMAX is a provider of comprehensive testing and personalized content across mid-range and low-cost private K-10 schools in India. It aims to improve learning outcomes by providing schools with an integrated product suite including  textbooks, workbooks, assessments, feedback reports, personalized worksheets  and teaching support material. Its founders however, view their B2B strategy as a seeding strategy to eventually form a B2C education marketplace where they can collaborate with other education content companies and publishers to provide the right content to the right student in the right form at the right time. To fuel this rapid growth, IMAX has been scouting for investors. It has received an equity investment offer from a large Indian educational book publisher that has been rapidly acquiring companies to strengthen its hold in the education market. The founders must decide if they should accept the publisher's offer or continue to look for an investor who believes in their vision.

In 2015, Downingtown Area School District (DASD), a suburban school district near Philadelphia, entered its second year implementing Ivy Academy, a blended learning program in its two traditional high schools. Superintendent Larry Mussoline, having for several years worked to incorporate technology into student learning hoped that Ivy Academy would deepen student learning, provide more rigorous courses, introduce more scheduling flexibility, and change the culture among teachers in his district. In Ivy Academy, classes meet two out of every six days in-person, and students are expected to work asynchronously online during the other days. In the first year, 341 students (out of 3,800 eligible) and 19 teachers (out of 240 eligible) participated in Ivy Academy; in the second year, the program grew. However, final exam results for students participating in the Ivy Academy are mixed, and certain staff and parents remain skeptical of its effectiveness. This case explores whether DASD is ready to scale Ivy Academy and make it the primary way in which students learn.

In fall of 2015, the Toronto, Canada-based education technology non-profit Rumie had distributed thousands of computer tablets preloaded with collections of thousands of pieces of curated educational content to nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in some of the most impoverished countries around the world that lacked basic educational resources. Founder and executive director Tariq Fancy, with his team, was deciding whether to accept a large new order from an NGO in Pakistan that would require Rumie for the first time to provide ongoing services such as teacher training, performance monitoring, and other support. Some on the team felt that providing a full suite of bundled services would detract from their recent push to decouple Rumie's software and services from the physical tablets to achieve greater reach and scale. In October 2015, Rumie opened the LearnCloud, its proprietary online content curation portal for NGOs, to the public. Now anyone could discover, share, and rate free digital educational content from any source. Fancy considered, "Education Access represents a big order and huge growth, but does it lead us into doing things we haven't done before, may not be good at, and may not be scalable to be used by different partners in different geographies?"

This case is set in 2015 as a team at Match Education, a high performing charter middle school in Boston, explores new staffing and technology approaches in their quest to obtain what they term "jaw dropping" results. The team hopes to test and model for other schools solutions to specific educational problems. In 2013, the team began to think about the redesign to create a school model in which students spend significantly more time reading, more individualized attention is provided to students and families, the challenge of finding outstanding teachers is addressed, and to do so in a cost-effective manner. In their redesigned school, Match Next, students receive all of their instruction from inexperienced newly minted college graduates called tutors, who are supervised by one master teacher, called a Director of Curriculum of Instruction (DCI). In addition, the Match Next team infuses technology into instruction (e.g. students watch instructional videos and complete online activities) and operations (e.g. schools keeps track of student assessment results and select activities and problem sets from online databases). After the first year as a full-day program, results on the state test were very strong in math but below expectations in ELA (English Language Arts). The case explores questions related to designing the school model, interpreting early results, and assessing the team's ability to disseminate their model to other schools.

Max Ventilla and his team launches in 2013 AltSchool, a new network of tech-savvy independent K-8 "micro-schools." AltSchool is born out of Ventilla's frustration with the education options available for his young daughter. During his search, Ventilla comes to the conclusion that American schools are not adequately preparing students for the future. Ventilla leverages his network and his expertise in personalization developed during his time as a serial entrepreneur and a founding team member of Google+; he sets about recruiting engineers, educators, VC investors, and families to set in motion his mission to provide high-quality personalized education that will change the way parents, students, and educators experience the school day. Ventilla focuses on three aspects: 1) using technology to reduce operational costs of the traditional school, 2) intense focus on customer service and reframing school as a service for parents, teachers, and students, and 3) using technology and data in the classroom to create a continuous improvement cycle. As Max and the AltSchool team wrap up their first year in operation, they reflect on lessons learned from their iterative process; they reflect on the best ways for the team to grow their network of schools, to demonstrate success to their investors, and to have an impact on changing education in America. The case gives students the opportunity to explore how an education technology company can build new education technology tools, and alter school structures and funding models to set the stage for a new model for the education sector.

Set in Fall 2014, the traditional textbook publishing industry is being transformed by technological innovations and new student achievement standards. This case chronicles how Rob Waldron, CEO, and his team bring Curriculum Associates (CA), a traditional supplemental publishing company, up to date amidst the changing publishing landscape. Founded in 1969, CA established a reputation as a pioneering workbook company specializing in helping teachers deliver targeted intervention for students in the classroom. As Waldron stepped into his role as CEO in 2008, he set about leveraging CA's existing educational expertise and relationships with school districts to take it from a traditional supplemental publishing company to a competitive player in the educational technology space. Waldron and the CA team-through innovations in curricular design, investments in technology, and a rigorous understanding of the Common Core State Standards-landed on a hit modular digital assessment and print-based workbook series called Ready®, Ready® Common Core, and i-Ready® Diagnostic and Instruction. In 2014, as sales are booming, Waldron and his team wonder how CA can stay competitive in the rapidly evolving publishing and education technology landscape while growing sustainably and building on its existing competitive advantage. The case gives students the opportunity to explore how a small or medium-sized privately-owned company can leverage its strengths and innovate while grappling with the challenges of providing software-as-a-service in the education sector, a leap for a company used to selling directly to schools and school districts.

"Set in 2014, this case follows John Danner and his team at Zeal as they consider their product development strategy. In February 2013, serial entrepreneurs John Danner and Sanjay Noronha co-found Zeal, an education technology start up providing a web-based, mobile learning platform that helps students from Kindergarten to 8th grade build math and literacy skills based on Common Core State Standards through personalized learning plans. Having been a teacher and founder of a successful network of charter schools, Danner believes learning does not have to be limited to the classroom and wants to create a product that can connect students, parents, and teachers to facilitate individual student learning. Furthermore, he believes that offering a social, personalized learning tool can offer a fun way for students to learn and can also save time for teachers who want to provide differentiated instruction. Based out of the offices of the NewSchools Venture Fund in Palo Alto, Danner and Noronha work to rapidly develop the product with their founding team and their teacher partners at Rocketship Education, a K-5 charter school organization providing blended instruction combining technology and traditional methods. After several iterations, the Zeal team launches the latest version of Zeal in Fall 2014. While reflecting on their process to find product-market fit, Danner and his team wonder where to pivot next and seek an appropriate business model that considers their customer and user base. The case describes the student, parent, and teacher features offered by the evolving Zeal product, and how the team begins with a focus on personalized, peer-to-peer learning and, based on feedback, refines the product to add in-class features and create a teacher product. Students will have the opportunity to explore how an early SaaS start-up in the educational technology space can approach early product development, pilot in classrooms, and connect with different stakeholders."

In 2011, DaVita HealthCare Partners (DaVita)-a Fortune 500 healthcare services company specializing in kidney dialysis services-and the Denver Public Schools (DPS)-the largest school district in Colorado-forged a plan to incorporate greater intentional focus on culture and leadership within the district. A few months into the 2013-2014 school year, DaVita "Mayor" Kent Thiry, DPS Superintendent Tom Boasberg, and members of their teams gather to review and assess the overall progress, impact, and challenges of their unique corporate-community partnership focused on leadership development and culture over the past two years. With the partnership showing great promise, Thiry and his team wonder how they might create new partnerships and grow their social impact as a company without detracting from DaVita's own growth and expansion and the needs of its own "teammates." The case gives students the opportunity to explore how a mission-driven Fortune 500 company can leverage its own resources and HR expertise to partner with non-corporate entities to create social value and support success in American public education.