In 2019, Arnelle Ansong and Erika Hairston created Edlyft to support Black university students and adults enrolled in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses. Edlyft provided students access to group tutoring and study groups in order to excel in computer science courses.
On January 29, 2024, Edlyft announced that Edlyft AI Tutor, its generative AI platform, had been purchased by Google – a purchase that will help the startup scale the number of students it can reach.
The news comes after Edlyft first partnered with the tech giant in 2022 for Google Tech Exchange. This semester-long academic program teaches applied data structures (ADS) to students at select Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs).
Across the two years of partnership, Edlyft gathered dozens of hours of video data from tutoring sessions, pouring it into the Edlyft AI Tutor. The platform allows students to not only have helpful knowledge at their fingertips but also have “that relatable human touch,” Hairston described.
“Historically, Edlyft impacted students in the Google Tech Exchange program by pairing them with an empathetic peer mentor who has aced the course content before. While a fantastic resource, a peer mentor’s time is a constraint that limits how many and how often students can be supported,” explained Hairston.
She continued, “From our perspective, in Google’s hands, the Edlyft AI Tutor will support a growing number of talented future engineers as Google scales its programs. Our hope is that every student feels seen when they watch videos of peer tutors who look like them and who’ve been in their shoes explaining complex concepts and answering their questions.”
Students can utilise the tool by typing their questions into a chat box. The AI program will then provide an answer and video snippets from the Edlyft AI Tutor. The mission behind the platform is to aid in making computer science support more accessible.