Course Hero + Symbolab = Student Success
Accelerating Course Hero’s Mission in Math
I am thrilled to announce the news that Course Hero is acquiring Symbolab and share my thoughts about why.
What is Symbolab?
Imagine a calculator that doesn’t just show you the final answer but helps you understand how to get there with step by step explanations and related practice problems. Symbolab is an advanced math education platform that does this, and does it really well.
Symbolab helps over 200 million students answer, understand and practice over 1 billion questions they ask per year. Symbolab allows students to learn, practice and discover math topics using mathematical symbols and scientific notations as well as text. It also provides automated step by step solutions to algebraic, trigonometric and calculus topics taught in middle school through college.
Symbolab offers a wealth of smart calculators including: equations, simultaneous equations, inequalities, integrals, derivatives, limits , tangent line, trigonometric equations, functions and more. The stated goal of the site is to make scientific content universally accessible by expanding the searchable data space onto scientific notations, expressions, equations and formulas. This is done by applying proprietary machine learning algorithms in order to understand the meaning and context of the queries.
Watch an example of asking a question on Symbolab here:
Values & Mission Aligned Teams
The Symbolab team is a heroic nine-person team of high-impact mathematicians and technologists. Symbolab is based in Tel Aviv, Israel.
Michal Avny, CEO and Co-founder at Symbolab, and I met for the first time at the 2019 ASU GSV education conference in San Diego, CA. Through conversations then through to today with Michal and Lev Alyshayev, CTO and Co-founder at Symbolab, we found that our teams are values aligned. When I asked Michal what motivates them? She answered that the Symbolab team loves to work on challenging and interesting technical problems related to helping students learn math.
Founded in 2006 and 2011 respectively, Course Hero and Symbolab both have cultures of persistent and optimistic problem solvers motivated to help students and educators succeed. We also found that we share the same vision to increase access to affordable and quality learning resources to as many students as possible, helping them graduate, confident and prepared.
Industry Leading Math Education Technology
Our research showed the Symbolab product to be unique with regards to its advanced technology and user-centric offering. Math and technology powered at its core, Symbolab provides step-by-step explanations to a huge range of mathematical problems across secondary and post secondary education levels and subjects, including advanced algebra, trigonometry and calculus. Using AI-driven technology, Symbolab is the only math education platform that can solve complex geometry problems featuring detailed explanations and proofs. It’s this expertise in AI and learning science that will further amplify Course Hero’s future development of cutting-edge resources and tools for learners.
Powered by their high impact team and industry leading technology, Symbolab has achieved large scale user adoption. And this large scale student usage helps power up Symbolab’s student-focused research and development. The data related to students asking over 1 billion math questions helps the Symbolab team understand what questions students are asking the most, where students are getting stuck the most, and how to more intelligently build better math equation explanations and learning tools.
Michal also explains that Math, in particular, is an emotional subject to learn for students. Anxiety and confidence are emotions critically linked to student performance in and passion for mathematics. The Symbolab team’s level of user empathy and focus combined with their technology capability and focus is a key part of the recipe for how Symbolab has and will continue to build better learning and teaching products.
Math is one of the most popular and difficult subjects for students studying on Course Hero. Together, our teams see the opportunity to better help students studying math on both Course Hero’s platform as well Symbolab’s platform.
Accelerating Course Hero’s Mission via Product Innovation & Acquisition
At Course Hero, we look to accelerate our mission to help as many students succeed as possible through both internal product innovation and acquisition. In both cases, we believe in the power of a mission and values-aligned team as well as technology powered learning and teaching platforms.
The Symbolab acquisition is our first since announcing the closing our Series B financing in August 2020. As we work to offer more and more value to students and educators on the Course Hero platform, we are interested in companies helping students and educators learn and teach better, more affordably, and at scale.
