We have created a tool that helps people learn faster and retain more, and we do this by introducing to the world the first and only personalized adaptive speed solution.
I remember when I was 16, and the internet was still dial-up, I was DYING to do distance learning at Stanford because I couldn’t afford the living costs in the US, but that was sci-fi 20 years ago. Nowadays, especially after the pandemic, you can do an online degree at almost every university in the world and never even be in the country where the university is located. My friend Mnatsakan is currently living my dream and is doing his 2nd master’s degree in data science at the University of Michigan. It’s fully online, and I doubt he will ever be in Michigan.
How Saima was born
Just like any other student who interacts with any online material, Mnatsakan, being a non-native English speaker, has also been trying to optimize his comprehension and time spent on online learning. He started using the super popular playback speed functionalities that current media players offer, but, surprisingly, he suffered even more, as he was not able to find the right speed and had to pause and rewind all the time. This is when our start-up idea was born, and this is when I found my true passion in Cognitive Science.
There are hundreds of tutorials and tools that help content creators record their materials in a manner that keeps students engaged. This also includes tutorials on how to record the online learning material at the “right speed." And the day I started doing additional research on this topic, I always asked myself, “But what do we call the right speed, and how can a content creator predict what’s the right speed for me?”. Do they consider that I am a non-native English speaker with a limited vocabulary? Do they consider the level of my fatigue when I am watching the material? Do they consider how I slept yesterday and, finally, what I ate today?
The problem is even more evident when several speakers are in one single video. Below, I have illustrated the speed changes of a single 12-minute training material taken from Coursera, which has several speakers all with different paces.
As you can see from the diagram, the pace during this one single training material varies from 130–190 words per minute. Now imagine using these fixed playback speed features in this particular training:
start fast-forwarding at 02:00
slow down to 03:20
again fast-forward to 04:00
keep playing with the playback button almost 10 times during one single video
And what do you get as a final result? Your comprehension suffered as you were busy trying to adjust the playback speed, plus you tried to save some time but instead ended up wasting time trying to find your own video speed.
To keep the story short, me and Mnatsakan have created a tool that helps people learn faster and retain more, and we do this by introducing to the world the first and only personalized adaptive speed solution. We at Saima are more than sure that this will be a game changer in the audio/video consumption world, especially for non-native English speakers.
We are both in Silicon Valley now, and we will be launching our product soon, and hearing a Stanford PhD say, “Finally someone in the world is solving this problem,” meant the world to us.
And yes, after I’m done living my current life, I’m going to start the 4th chapter of my life and study Cognitive Science at Stanford University in 2025.