Recently, we unveiled our hyper-personalized, artificial intelligence (AI)-powered workplace training solution to a small but growing list of private beta testers (if you haven’t registered yet, you can still sign up here).

This marked a significant milestone in Soffos’ exciting, yet relatively short, history. It also got us thinking – how much do the newest members of our community know about the origins of Soffos, and the mission we have set out on?

Read on if you’re interested to learn about the inspiration behind our revolutionary training platform...

Traditional education hinders lifelong learning

As humans, we’re all lifetime learners – whether we realize it or not.  

While most will reminisce about the days of formal education when reflecting on their own learning journey, much of our personal development takes place outside the confines of educational institutions such as schools or universities.  

This means that the same challenges we have faced historically, when trying to improve our understanding of a subject or absorb new knowledge, follow us through life as we progress into new professional roles and develop more skills.  

Specifically, there are three key obstacles that hinder efficient teaching within a contemporary context:

1. Living in a knowledge explosion. Today, the world is facing the problem of a knowledge explosion, which has been accelerated by the ease with which we can communicate information through electronic devices. With new knowledge being generated every day and instantly accessible via the internet, it is becoming exponentially harder to sift through everything to find the ‘knowledge nuggets’ we need. In short, there’s just too much information out there nowadays. How are we supposed to prepare curricula, and, crucially, do it quickly enough to retain up-to-date content whilst maintaining quality?

2. Generic education. Despite advances in educational technology (EdTech) tools that promise to enhance learning outcomes, the reality is that the traditional model of education has hardly changed in recent decades. Still, a room full of students will primarily be taught the same information, in the same way, with the expectation that each individual will be able to assimilate the knowledge just as effectively as their peers – despite their obvious differences. We call this the ‘one voice many ears’ approach – and we feel that it belongs in a museum of educational practices.

3. Passive learning. Passive learning might be defined as simply having information recited to you by an instructor, or reading through learning resources without putting any of that new-found knowledge into practice. This is a remarkably inefficient process. No doubt, the majority of those who have ever sat through a lecture or spent hours reading tedious textbooks must have noticed how easily information slips away if it is not properly absorbed through more active forms of learning.  

Here at Soffos, we knew things had to change – and fast. That’s why we harnessed the novel capabilities of emerging technologies to truly improve the way people learn.  

Why Soffos?

Soffos was born due to simple necessity; a frustration with the status quo within education – workplace training, where the task of developing employees continues to pose a challenge.  

There are several reasons why Soffos is in a league of its own. Our sophisticated learning management system (LMS) employs the ‘Socratic Method’ of conversational learning to interrogate users’ current levels of knowledge and understanding. Unlike run-of-the-mill eLearning platforms, our AI solution also creates personalized learning paths for each user and ensures that they are continuously engaged in active knowledge acquisition.

A new trainee at a law firm, for example, will therefore receive a different package of support than an established lawyer who simply wants to brush up on a new set of regulations. The former would likely benefit from more in-depth Q&A sessions and links to helpful company resources to help them settle in, while the latter might only need a high level overview of relevant changes. All the while, Soffos will cater to individual learning preferences and identify gaps in understanding to ensure that each user can progress at their own pace.  

Staff members will no longer have to spend hours trawling through documents to find the information they need. Managers can consistently upload new documents to build an extensive knowledge repository for their company, with Soffos able to quickly synthesize the data and revert accurate answers to vocational questions when called upon.  

Soffos was created to support lifelong learning and help users achieve their goals. We look forward to seeing how our novel solution will reinvent workplace training as more and more businesses sign up to trial our corporate KnowledgeBot.