Gurasis Singh is driven to help students learn.
“My goal has always been to create an impact in education,” he said.
Singh, a junior in the Honors program, came to the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities to pursue the entrepreneurial management major in the Carlson School. As a new student, he didn’t yet know that he’d end up piloting a new AI tool to help students learn more effectively: Echo Learn.
“I was always drawn to the entrepreneurship program because it had so many opportunities,” he said. “I can really do a lot of things with this degree.”
During his sophomore year, he added a second major: political science. Singh has always been interested in policy and community building; combining the two majors was a way to pursue his passion for educational policy.
He made another big decision during his sophomore year: registering for the Entrepreneurship in Action course. Students in the class spend the fall semester developing and evaluating their ideas for a business. They can then choose to continue with their business launch through spring semester. Each business receives up to $15,000 in funding from the Carlson School to pilot their business venture.
Singh knew he wanted to combine his passion for policy with his entrepreneurial drive for his project. Growing up in a family of immigrants, he has always appreciated the value of education.
“I was the only American-born citizen out of my entire family and that comes with a lot of privilege and a lot of burden,” he said. “I think that education has been my way of giving back.”
He joined two other students - Isaac Porter and Samra Bojcic - to launch Echo Learn with the goal of transforming how college faculty integrate active learning in their classrooms.
“I don’t really believe that we’re always teaching in the right ways and learning in the right ways,” Singh said.
Echo Learn utilizes the principles founded in the Learning Pyramid. Developed by the National Training Laboratories Institute, the Learning Pyramid demonstrates that “most students only remember about 5% of what they learn while listening to their teachers talk, but retain nearly 90% of what they learn through teaching others,” according to Science Outside. Singh wanted to create a tool that replicated this way of learning by teaching.
The platform addresses two primary challenges: students' low overall comprehension and declining retention rates.
He and his team began work on developing a large language model that would ask users questions based on material they upload. That way, students would have to think critically about the information and explain their answers.
The initial prototype was modest - or as Singh described it, “one simple, really ugly page.” The user would load information into the platform (like a required reading essay) and the LLM would generate three questions based on the information. The goal was to encourage students to think critically while engaging the material; they would essentially be both the student and the teacher.
The second prototype was more refined and was tested with over 200 students.
“This allowed just to get more clarity on what we want, what students enjoy, and what instructors were saying worked well,” Singh said.
His team quickly realized that students weren’t likely to continue using the program on their own. The platform required users to have the intrinsic desire to learn.
“So what do you do when you’re trying to create a project for improving education and your primary customer segment doesn’t care about the value, at least on the surface level?”
Instead, they decided to pivot their focus to teachers. Singh and his team talked to over 50 EdTech experts, college faculty, and business professionals to better tailor the program for educators to use in their classrooms. They plan to launch 15 pilot programs in higher education classrooms this fall, with the eventual goal of reaching the high school market, especially in AP classes where instructors are more likely to utilize additional study tools.
Singh’s entrepreneurial spirit extends beyond the classroom. He created the Sikh Student Association during his freshman year. The organization is “dedicated to promoting awareness of Sikhi while creating a supportive and inclusive community for Sikh students at UMN.”
Singh credits the Honors program for helping him funnel his wide range of interests into a path that makes sense for him.
“I’ve learned that I can do what I want, and I can figure out a way to get there, even if it’s an atypical path,” he said.