Individual, social & artificial intelligence

Openpbl.ai is an edtech company positioned in the "advanced technologies" segment (Hollon IQ framework) that develops and markets products that substantially reduce the costs for companies and schools to develop socio-emotional and behavioral skills through the active method of problem-based learning (PBL).

The company licenses the use of a proprietary SaaS (software as a service) platform that promotes access for employees at all levels of organizations to the active development of behavioral skills.

In addition to using artificial intelligence, which reduces the costs of content production and student performance evaluation, the ProblemPeoplePlay™ platform utilizes third-party assets, providing economies of scale to Openpbl.ai's continuous and scalable operation, as it guarantees the availability of these resources even with increased company activity.

There is ample evidence demonstrating an imbalance between the demand from companies and vocational training schools and the supply of educational programs for the effective development of socio-emotional and behavioral skills.

Problem-based learning (PBL) is a proven effective learning strategy for developing these skills, but it is only accessible to a minority of professionals due to the high cost and scarcity of resources involved.

Studies by the WEF (World Economic Forum) support the idea that this imbalance: (1) affects most professionals and aspiring professionals in the workforce, (2) impacts companies and schools equally worldwide, and (3) is likely to worsen in the coming years. The WEF estimates that by 2030 (?) half of the workforce, approximately 1.1 billion professionals, will be affected, with an economic impact of around US$3 billion, a global impact of very large proportions, both societally and economically.

Given this window of opportunity, Openpbl.ai invested in the development of proprietary technology to enable the mass use of PBL, acting on two main points: (1) the automation of the processes of creating problem situations and evaluating user performance, and (2) the instructional redesign of the PBL cycle to adapt it to the methodology's new target audience.

The first product developed, the ProblemsPeoplePlay™ SaaS platform, creates (and administers/manages?) courses in the form of dramatized web series, in which users participate, in each episode, in complete cycles of interactive and personalized PBL experiences.

The ProblemsPeoplePlay™ SaaS platform combines: (1) the use of artificial intelligence to automate complex tasks in the PBL development and execution process; (2) learning process enrichment techniques that seek to promote high engagement; and (3) an innovative instructional design that uses the most modern e-learning standards (namely xAPI and LTI) that allow continuous measurement of approximately 50 parameters per student per episode, providing a statistically relevant amount of data to prove the product's effectiveness.

The result is software that creates customized problem situations for companies and training schools and interactively executes highly engaging active PBL (problem-based learning) experiences at an affordable cost.

The company is a pioneer in two key aspects: (1) in proposing an inclusive approach for employees at all hierarchical levels with courses that were previously only accessible to the highest levels of the organizational hierarchy; and (2) in enabling lifelong learning, an increasingly necessary strategy, but difficult to implement due to budgetary and engagement constraints. (Let's talk about dramatization and student engagement with character-driven series and the inclusion of hard skill tests, increasing the effectiveness of the training?)

Our clients are organizations willing to solve the "difficult" problem of behavioral corporate training.

The problem stems from the influence of both situational and structural factors. Among the situational factors, the following stand out: (1) the increased importance of non-technical skills compared to technical knowledge and abilities, which were previously sufficient for performance; and (2) the multiplicity of effective behaviors possible when facing difficulties unrelated to technical expertise, whether in basic education or in vocational education at the technical and higher education levels.

Current scenario: the "easy" problem of behavioral training in companies is solved using traditional educational products that, despite being efficient for technical training, prove highly inefficient in inducing behavioral and socio-emotional skills. As a result: (1) they have unnecessary costs due to the low engagement of the target audience; and (2) they lack instruments capable of collecting and analyzing the minimum information necessary for managing the training and development of behavioral and socio-emotional skills.