Nick Newsom (NN) 

Hey everyone what’s up. Nick here again. So on Bytes of Ingenity, we’re interested in people who’re working with digital technologies to complement humans. Who’re developing forms of AI to improve worker productivity, augment human capabilities, and to provide better, more usable information for decision making. 

Today’s guests are doing just that within education. Joining us are Paul Barakat Diab and Elie Nahas, co-founders of the e-learning company Augmental. The learning platform they’ve developed turns the traditional teacher-centric model of education on its head, using AI to personalise students’ learning paths. By tailoring course material to each student’s abilities and learning stye, this adaptive learning model helps students stay engaged and achieve better results. In this episode we discuss how personalisation enhances learning outcomes, how AI ed-tech platforms help teachers, and the need for holistic change within public education. We also learn about the story of Augmental and how the company has navigated Lebanon’s financial collapse and grown. Stay with us. 

So the story of Augmental is kind of punk. There’s like this strong DIY ethic of just, you know, getting up and finding a solution, doing it yourself. And you’ve developed a product that’s kind of about nonconformity. It’s about tailoring each student’s learning experience to their strengths and finding a way to bring the best out of them. To kick off this episode, I thought it would be good for you guys to just tell me a bit about how Augmental came about and how you guys ended up working together.  

Paul Barakat Diab (PD) 

Sure. So Augmental first started as a personal story where I struggled during my last couple of years at school, and I was unable to fit the educational system where all students are expected to learn the same thing the same way. And then that stayed with me until I met Ellie. And one night we were studying for our exam at university, and we’re trying to explain a topic for each other. And then, like each one was seeing it in a different way. And then we were discussing how even the professor explained the third way. And then we’re like in education they expect us to give us the same material and the same instructions and for us to learn. And then this is where we started to look into the personalization and education. And we discovered that everything got personalized except for education. And then that was the initial idea behind Augmental and we started researching the market and started working on the product.  

Elie Nahas (EN) 

Yeah, we started by iterating throughout the process of personalization, by checking for each individual how we how we should tailor the material, how we should adapt it. Because at the end, everyone has its own, let’s say profile or background. So we need to adapt the material for them. So this was also a tough decision to take, how to personalize, how to adapt it and to take into consideration the education and pedagogical also approach for each individual in order to be able to adjust that.  

NN 

So how’s this product grown and evolved over this period of time? Like what was the first viable product that you had and what did it look like? And then how is it come to where it is now?  

PD 

Well, very interesting question. Because the first product that we had, definitely we focused on the value proposition, which is personalisation of the learner journey. And we had a product that was primarily targeting educational institutions at the time, and it was more of a learner product where once the course is created, then I would personalize the learning path depending on the learning style, learning level and learning pace of the learner. And then with time this has changed because of a lot of factors, including the market dynamics, readiness of the market in the region as well, where we’re based. And now the product is more for educational institutions, but also for content creators and course creators to build their online learning experience.  

EN 

So because it’s not just for schools, so you continuously learn throughout your life. So it’s school,  university, corporate. So this is the lifelong learning. So this is where you need to adapt for each one in order to personalize the experience for everything they’re doing.  

NN 

And when you were both at university, did you find that there were many other students who faced that same sort of challenge of struggling with a kind of rigid curricula and way of learning?  

PD 

Yeah, it has always been the case, like looking at like students with us at university, at school, even after that, in the working environment, trying to learn new things, each one learns in a different way and is provided with the same materials in each learning environment. It’s not just for schools, and this is why we’re a lifelong learning platform. So we’re across schools, higher education, but also continuous training.  

NN 

So if you could explain a bit to me what’s going on behind the scenes when the platform is tailoring the content and the learning journey, like how does that work and how does it understand what suits me best in terms of content and learning style? 

EN 

Yeah, first of all, once a learner logs in to the platform. So we start by building a profile for each user. So this profile gets updated throughout the journey. So while you are learning we are getting more data about you. We’re getting more how you are behaving, how you are answering the questions. Let’s say what is your favourite style? Are you more inclined towards reading, let’s say a text, watching a video or checking an image? Listening to audio. So this will allow us also to adapt the material. And it’s not just about the learning style, it’s also how you are interacting with the material. Let’s say if you got a question you answered incorrectly. So also we adapt the material for you so the AI will interfere and assist you in real time. If you answer wrong, it will be adjusted. It will tailor the question for you. It tailors the personalization for you. Because at the end, each learner inside the course will have different paths at the end to reach the same learning objectives set by the instructor.  

PD 

Yeah. And Elie mentioned about the intervention of the AI. So on a traditional learning platform, if you’re stuck on a question, right, you don’t know how to answer that question. You would just choose any option there. And you submit your answer to see if it’s correct or not. And this is what we wanted to change also. Its being able to provide in real time, personalized feedback and explanation. So if you’re stuck on the question, instead of submitting your answer, you can click on “I Don’t know” and then specify whether you don’t understand the question or you don’t know the answer. And once you say, I don’t understand the question, what the platform would do is actually go back, look at your history, look at the questions that you’ve answered previously related to that topic. If you spent enough time to actually review the content that is related to that and then it will give you a personalized explanation of how to think while answering this question. So it’s all about providing personalized explanation, feedback, and tailoring the learning path for learners. And at the end of each course is by providing personalized summaries about the course, the different reports and analytics for different stakeholders.  

EN 

And it’s not just AI driven. So also we provide instructors with detailed materials reports, analytics about, let’s say, each user, each individual, let’s say how they are performing on this specific learning objective or on this specific question, because at the end, the instructor should also know what’s happening, let’s say in class or what’s happening in this specific course, in order to adjust the material. Maybe there is a problem specifically in this actual material, so they can adjust it in order to provide a better course for the end user  

NN  

Right. So the AI helps the teacher identify where students are struggling potentially, or where their material hasn’t really explained the issue or the topic well enough. Whilst the AI also helps revise certain issues based on what you’re struggling with or you’ve identified you’re not so sure on, and then kind of takes you back on a path that reframes the problem. Is that an accurate summarization?  

PD 

Yeah, it is accurate. And when we say it’s an AI powered learning platform, it is AI powered for both the educator and the learner. So from an educator’s perspective, it helps accelerate the content creation process, enriching existing material, using AI, providing different reports and analytics to be able to understand what is happening, and from the learner side there’s the personalization. So we believe that the teacher’s role is very important. And this is why we provide these reports and analytics to empower the educators to take informed decisions.  

EN 

It’s not just about taking a course. So maybe after taking a course or after finishing school you have assignments. So when it comes to assignment the AI will help the instructor to generate let’s say specific assignments for this individual user based on what happened inside this course. So it’s not a standard assignment for everyone to, to do for, let’s say, for the next day or to be delivered.  

NN 

I suppose some critics might say that the AI would be like tailoring the learning paths your to your strengths, like you know it delivers you what you’re good at. Is that, is that false?  

PD 

It could if you implement it in a way where you you’re not challenging the learner constantly. So the way we’ve built it is to make sure that the student is not always in their comfort zone. Right. It’s not about just giving the content the way they are more comfortable with, with their learning style and their level. It’s always about, you know, each learner should know how to learn a text, how to read a text and extract information and answer questions. Right. So you cannot just avoid that by always giving visuals. So the platform makes sure to use different learning styles with the learners, challenge the learners throughout the journey, providing different difficulty levels of questions and materials to make sure the student is always challenged. So definitely the AI can be used to tailor it in the comfort little way for the learner. But this is not how we’ve built it.  

NN 

And so if I’m understanding correctly, then the main sort of competitive advantages of Augmental are the tailored learning path leading to better learning outcomes for students and higher engagement, as well as the ability for teachers to have real time analytics to see the performance of their students and respond accordingly. Plus, I read about also the AI model helping them actually design the course as well.  

PD 

Exactly. So depending on the learning outcomes and objectives of your course the AI can even help you by providing you these learning outcomes and objectives based on your course context. And then we’ll help you in lesson planning, content generation, content enrichment, if you already have some content and then question generation. So it helps you throughout the process and it helps you save time on content creation and course design. 

EN 

Yeah. Also it will reduce if you want the complexity of creating courses. So one of the features that we will be introducing soon as you can, let’s say if you have a certain PowerPoint, you have a certain file, or let’s say you have a webinar. So you just upload this material and the platform will take, let’s say, the presentation and will break it down and create a full course for you based on that even let’s say if you have a certain video. So it will break it down, let’s say every two minutes it will create a content for that or direct the questions in order to make sure that we’re facilitating the course creation for the instructor – especially for instructors who are not yet familiar, let’s say, with technology or if they want to create a content, how to create it, how to adapt it. so we are we are also facilitating that journey for them.  

NN 

Cool. Is that done through LLMs? What is the technology behind that.  

EN 

Yeah. So we’re using different we have our own um we’re using our own. Let’s say I’m trained on certain, let’s say, material. And we also using OpenAI, Gemini also AWS because we need to provide the most accurate content for them based on what they need, what they need to implement. And also, when it comes to personalization, we also cross reference between different models because as you know, as we know that certain LLMs might give certain wrong answers or context for this specific requirement. So we cross reference across multiple LLMs to make sure the content we are providing is accurate for this specific use case.  

NN 

Okay, so it’s pulling content for training material from the various different LLMs plus the material you feed it, plus your own one that you’ve developed.  

EN  

Also if you are a publisher who has content, what we do is we train the LLM  based on content you have. So it will be just for you and the content the instructor is going to use, this specific publisher will be trained will take the data from trusted content.   

NN 

So you guys started Augmental around 2018 and shortly after Lebanon had its financial collapse. Um, starting a business is hard at the best of times, and some might say it’s a bit mad to start one when you have, like, everything going on that’s happened in Lebanon, you know, a defunct banking sector, runaway inflation. How have you managed to navigate starting a business in that context and growing it to where it is now?  

PD 

Yeah, so we started in 2018 developing the product. And in 2019, I remember very well, February 2019, we signed the first school using the product, and we were starting to look at more, more schools to use it. And we started finalizing deals for the next academic year. And this is where actually the economic crisis started, followed by Covid and then the whole situation that was not just In Lebanon, but it was a worldwide pandemic. And during time we were a local company that was working on from day one an international product, because being based out of Lebanon is very good because it gives you the right market to experiment. But you always think international because you know that your market is small. So you need to build a flexible product. You cannot build a product is just for Lebanon because the Lebanese market is never enough if you want to grow your, your business. So , so we had that in terms of the product. What we struggled with is definitely what every business struggled with during the economic crisis, which is the money being in the bank, our customers, all of them being based in Lebanon. So even their purchasing power went down. So we had to start thinking how to move outside. And this is where we actually moved to Abu Dhabi. We moved through a government funded program done by Hub 71 in Abu Dhabi. We moved there and started thinking, how can we grow in the region and internationally from there. And yeah, that was the move that we did to be able to start growing and expanding.  

EN 

But definitely also it was a challenge because it’s a new market, new country. So we don’t have any connection yet. So we need to build that trust to build that connection or also to target that market and to start expanding there.  

NN 

So you had other support along the way as well. I read that you won several competitions, prize funds and places on startup accelerator incubators, including ones run by Microsoft and Amazon. So how would you say these experiences shaped where Augmental is today?  

PD 

So we took a decision from the beginning not to raise funds until we were sure that we have a product that people are using and willing to pay for it. So what we did at the beginning was purely bootstrapping. And then we were participating in different competitions, winning some of them. We’ve raised, I would say a good amount out of competitions that allowed us to, to build the product at the beginning. And then definitely the different accelerators and incubators and programs that we’ve been through, whether we started here in Lebanon at Smart ESA and then in Abu Dhabi with Hub 71. And then the latest one was with AWS in Seattle. So all of those supporters along the way, allowed us to shape the technology, the business strategy. But there is a very important factor other than those programs are our advisors.  

EN 

So yeah, I wanted to mention that because since day one, we had our advisor and mentors when it comes to technical business sales. Also, they had a previous startup. So without them, we woudnt be able to be here or to reach so far. Because as you know, on the experience and the journey you have up and downs. So you need someone to guide you. You need someone to take you, push you, push your limits. So it’s not an easy journey, but it’s an exciting journey. 

NN 

So your mentor was someone outside of these competitions and incubators. How did you get connected?  

PD 

So actually one of our founding members, who’s one of the shareholders today in the company, connected us to amazing mentors that they previously worked with on another startup. This is how we got connected to them. We actually, even before I remember, even before going into the first accelerator that was here in Lebanon, we kind of built our own accelerator with them. We went and spent around six months, shared the same office. There is always, you know, when you build your advisors and your mentors, your board of advisors. There are two ways to do that. One is you bring very credible names in the industry that you’re working in, which is very important. But what’s really important as well is to have active advisors. So our advisors were active advisors that we could seek their help and advice at any point in time. And this really helped us to learn and iterate faster, even if that means sometimes failing but failing faster, learning faster, and being able to reach what we reached.  

EN 

Yeah. And till now, every week we have a meeting with our advisors to move forward. So since 2018. So on a weekly basis we have a meeting with them. Because it’s not just about the startup or the product, it’s all about the people also. So we need to make sure that we build the right leadership in order to be to lead the team, to lead the company, to know how to think outside the box, not just, let’s say to focus in order to bring more value and to innovate.  

NN 

So it’s about a combination of things having the kind of financial support that you get from competitions, from accelerators, plus the kind of network and ecosystem that’s around the entrepreneurs in, in a particular country that helps you build that network of people who can mentor you and take you to where you want to be.  

And so now I read on your LinkedIn Elie, that. Augmental is now in 11 countries and used by over 300 institutions. I don’t know if those stats are now higher, but that’s a pretty huge thing to have achieved since January 2024. So obviously you’re looking to expand further. And you told me before, the people who are putting material on the platform or using the platform are covering a wide range of topics – from legal, tech, stem, project management – and imagine growing the user base involves reaching out to various educational institutions and training partners. Are you at this stage sort of approaching anyone and everyone in that space, or are you in any way trying to guide the kind of content that is being developed on Augmental and sort of playing a curatorial role?  

EN 

Yeah. So before January we were more into a B2B model. So directly approaching institutions or content creators in order to create, let’s say, content and to inside their institution and to train their employees or students. Back in January we launched our SaaS model. So actually any content creator or let’s say instructor wants to launch their own online academy so they can go into our website, subscribe, start the free trial, then it’s a monthly subscription where they can create their own academy, use AI to create their courses to support their learner, personalize their experience so mainly our target audience is more content creators, or whoever wants to teach online, whoever wants to create courses, or wants to monetize their courses. So this is mainly our target. 

PD 

From the SaaS model that’s the target. And we still do have the B2B that is targeting the educational institutions. And with the recent acquisition of Augmental by CME, we have now a wider range of products for educational institutions, including a student information system. So we now cover a larger scope for, for educational institutions as well. So we do still have the B2B that is targeting educational institutions. And on the SaaS model that I was talking about, it’s more the individual content creators, smaller training academies, people who want to build their online learning experience and start monetizing their content. This is where they go. 

NN 

Thinking back to your origin story, to the unsupportive school teacher who didn’t know how to bring the best out of you. It really touches on a problem related to the culture of teaching and of the system of education. And there was this good report put out by the Carnegie Middle East Center a couple of years ago on education in the Arab region, and it critiqued how in Lebanon and in the region more broadly, education is done through a very rigid and structured system where there are standardized curricula and where the focus is very much on the teacher’s delivery of the curriculum and the effectiveness of their teaching methods. The report calls it the banking model of education, where teachers like deposit knowledge to their students effectively, like turning them to passive learners. What you’ve built is radically different to that, right? Students are directing their learning experience themselves, and the outcomes are more learning based. And the teacher, the role of the teacher is more as a facilitator than like an instructor. So obviously it’d be great to see Augmental and adaptive learning in public schools. And I’m not sure if that’s something that you’re thinking of moving towards. But given the broader system and structure of the education environment in Lebanon and the region, at least at the public sort of level, that how do you sort of reconcile that tension between, you know, proposing a really new adaptive and self-directed education model within a highly top down, teacher centric model of education?  

PD 

Very interesting multi folded question that you just, um, asked. So let me start by saying that in general, the region not only the region, but even globally maybe the region a bit more that the especially pre-COVID, the market was not ready for solutions that are disrupting, you know, the way we’re teaching and learning. What happened after Covid is at least now educational institutions are willing to listen to what’s happening. They want to make sure that they are always ready. And they are implementing technology because they saw how technology helped them navigate this, this whole situation. So back then, we were more focused on private schools because they were more ready for us as a company who is trying to, you know, start and make sure we have enough money and revenue for the company and traction. We’re targeting the private sector because the decision-making process as well, is much easier than the government and the public sector. We’ve always thought about the public sector because this is where there are a lot of students and we want to impact those learners as well. So our mission is to impact every learner, whether they are in a public or private sector. So public schools are definitely something that is on the roadmap. We have some projects that are upcoming, hopefully soon for that as well.  

NN 

yeah, I think it’s really interesting how Covid sort of changed the readiness and the, the operating environment. And really you’re seeing now governments being more willing to innovate and try solutions that they haven’t used before or thought about before. But yeah, I think, um, targeting that sector, it has to have like really a really holistic approach where you’re working with the ministries, working with the teacher trainer academies, and maybe at community level as well, making sure if it’s being used in a distance learning kind of situation or blended learning situation that there’s an environment at home where people can actually learn, because that was obviously something that people struggled with a lot at Covid as well.  

PD 

Yeah. And I think there is also one point that you mentioned about the curriculum being like rigid. And I think this is also another point that that needs to be addressed, which is updating the existing curriculums to make sure that they, they answer to the shift that is happening. Right. Like making sure that we equip the students with 21st century skills. So that should change and evolve. And I think with technology this can be done. So I think this is the start. Like we need to start changing the curriculums first. 

EN 

Yeah definitely it will take time. But we’re happy to make an impact as soon as possible and to start onboarding more schools, more users and to do an impact on each learner.  

NN 

Yeah, absolutely. You’re right to start small, prove that it works, pilot it and grow. And maybe you know, when that impact is seen by the public sector by the by the ministries of education, they’ll be they’ll be willing to kind of revise the broader ecosystem and method of examination and accreditation that’s in place.  

Another point I was wondering, you know, it’s said a lot about AI that it frees up resources. So the more mundane tasks are done by the AI, you’re able to focus more on the complex aspects or analytical side of things. Or maybe it’s the human side of things. So do you see Augmental fitting within that mold or trend? Where in the school environment, teachers have more time available to focus on other things or on the students that are struggling the most?  

PD 

Yeah, sure. Definitely. It will free up time for teachers to focus on students. But it’s not just about freeing time. Personalization cannot be done without technology. Like imagine you need to create the profile of each learner, understand how they learn, tailoring the material for each learner, and doing that for 30 students in your classroom manually. 

EN 

Especially, you have a limited time. It’s it’s one hour, let’s say the class. So you need to make sure that you cover all the questions of each learner and to make sure that you personalize the material giving to each one. So it is difficult. So we’re trying remove that obstacle by giving them the power that you have between their hands the analytics, the reporting, the action that they can they can take inside, let’s say this course, what they can adjust, the see the pain points, let’s say inside this course. So they have the flexibility and more time in order to adjust the materials and to make an impact, rather than trying to see how to adapt, how to make sure that everyone is aligned within this 60 minutes.  

NN 

And at the moment, I know that when you started implementing or introducing Augmental in schools, it was actually within the classroom. Is that still the case, or is it more of a blended learning situation where it is being used at home and they come in to the lessons for some occasions? Or is it a mixed bag?  

PD 

It can be used in different ways. So we’ve seen use cases where it has it’s used as a complementary tool inside the classroom. So the teacher would explain. Then the users would take their devices and continue using the system. And now especially with the SaaS model that we have, that it’s not primarily targeting educational institutions, we have like more of a self-paced kind of learning. The platform also supports different types of hybrid learning, including having online learning on the platforms through video conferencing and then the materials on the system. So it’s flexible. You can apply different learning methods depending on your needs.  

NN 

And finally, where do you see the future of education and edtech going? Are there some weak signals or trends that you’re watching, that you’ve got your eyes on and you think you want to tap into? 

EN 

I guess it’s the community. So it’s all about engagement and how you engage with them. Let’s say this community, this specific school, this university or work environment. So it’s all about this and also gamification. About how you interact with the material. So it’s all about how you’re performing, how you can, let’s say take more challenges in order to get, let’s say, higher scores or to be able to, um, to better learn or to achieve more. So this is the main objective. 

PD 

One of the main objectives that say we have is to to have this. Yeah. And, and one of the main trends right now and this is why we’ve introduced the, the SaaS model, is that we’re also seeing higher education institutions providing and supporting lifelong learning and providing these continuous learning opportunities for their learners. And this is a shift that we’re seeing in the way people are now acquiring knowledge. It’s changing in the sense that you see in a lot of fields that people are not going anymore into the traditional way of, you know, going through a full diploma rather than choosing the courses that makes sense, that give them the right skills to be able to, to learn. So we’re seeing this shift happening with higher education. Another important thing is how fast learners want to learn. This is also a trend, the kind of bite-sized learning where you know, now the attention span of everyone is like these 30 seconds that are on a reel or TikTok. And that 30s, now we have to use that to deliver a learning materials, because people are now used to learn on the go and learn fast. And it’s something that we need to create that balance between how learners are now learning and at the same time that we need to transmit all that knowledge to make sure that they have the skills. So I think this is the this is the toughest thing to navigate at the moment is the way learners learn versus what we need to teach them. 

PD 

In addition to what Paul mentioned, we introduced a specific feature that we’ve been testing. Inside the platform they can generate bite-sized courses, mini courses for them, tailored to them based on their profile, based on historical data about how they are performing. They can go and input, let’s say, okay, I want to learn about this scientific project so they can input this and it will create for them content courses specifically for them, when it comes to questions and the course is actual material to make sure they can learn, let’s say between this 10 to 15 minute what they want to learn.  

NN 

Yeah. So um, personalization to capture people’s shrinking attention spans. But it’s really crazy that there’s the challenge now that teach teachers are facing to actually communicate and educate people with really complex topics in 15 minutes or even less or 30s on TikTok.  

PD 

And imagine it was even crazier before because like in the past couple of years, because we were like students are used to use technology at home every day, and then when they go to school or to the classroom, they’re not allowed to use technology, right? They’re not allowed to use their phone, their mobiles, their laptops. So taking them out of what they are used to. And saying you have to learn that way and everyone is listening to someone lecturing them. So that is changing. And I think we’re at a stage where we have to actually adapt. We cannot keep on trying to teach them the same way. And I think technology and AI specifically is able to, to do that change.  

NN 

So yeah, right. So meeting them where they are much more. Final question then, are you as hyped about teaching in the metaverse as Zuckerberg is?  

EN 

For me, it’s it’s a bit early. It’s not the right time. I’ll tell you, once we started Augmental, we’ve also tried to introduce the idea of augmented reality or virtual reality. So also you can let’s say when you are in the lab so you can do everything and virtual reality. So we try to do the best of it. But it was early. So we tried it, then we shut it down because the market wasn’t ready. So I believe in metaverse still still early.  

PD 

It’s on the way, but it’s early, I think, for many reasons. One is the cost of acquiring such technologies, the cost of building such technologies at scale, like for all courses, for all subjects like this is the challenge. Like when we started with virtual reality and augmented reality, when we wanted to build those materials for like one topic, it used to take a lot of time, a lot of money to build that. Imagine doing it for the full curriculum, for all grades, like it’s insane. So I think we’re going there. It’s just not the right time.  

EN 

We need to make sure, at least at the first phase or stage that schools or universities start using technology, then let’s say to adapt it. Then in order to move the metaverse, because from non-technology and to directly going into metaverse, it’s it is difficult.  

NN 

Yeah. That’s already quite serious digital divides people not having access to basic technologies. It’s  premature to be thinking about VR metaverse. All right. Cool. Thanks very much for for your time and for sharing your insights and thoughts. It’s been a real pleasure having you. Thank you, thank you, thank you for your time.