Scaling Academic Content with AI

Blended Teaching is an innovative EdTech startup revolutionizing higher education with video-based digital textbooks and learning resources. Unlike traditional static textbooks, these dynamic digital resources deliver academic content in a format that aligns with the way today's students consume information. This approach not only enhances engagement but also keeps content relevant and adaptable. Producing high-quality video content, however, is a complex process. Professors, often traveling from across the country, participate in tightly scheduled filming sessions lasting only a few days. With limited time, the margin for error is slim. That is where Artificial Intelligence (AI) comes in, enabling us to scale content creation and customization to meet our client‘s specific needs without disrupting production timelines.

We leverage AI as a transformative enabler for creating tailored content to meet diverse academic needs. Our process integrated AI across production stages, from pre-production planning to post-production refinement, ensuring the creation of polished, personalized content.

Before filming, AI helped optimize the organization of content. By analyzing initial drafts, it suggested additional topics, alternative structures, or potential areas for enhancement. This early intervention ensured the professor’s expertise translated seamlessly into effective and engaging course material.

AI truly stood out in post-production, enabling us to address complex issues and create customized content variations for professors. For example:

- Adapting Content for Varied Learning Requirements: After filming, a professor needed to adapt sections of the script to align with specific learning objectives. These adjustments required updates to both the audio and video, but returning to the studio for reshoots was not feasible. Our team leveraged AI tools to seamlessly incorporate these changes, ensuring the content met the tailored academic needs while maintaining the high production standards of the original material.

- Creating High-Fidelity Audio: Using high-quality footage and audio from the original shoot, we trained AI models to replicate the professor’s voice, including his intonation and delivery style. With his approval, a voice actor recorded the revised script at the desired pace and energy. AI then blended this recording with the professor’s voice, seamlessly integrating corrections into the existing content.

- Generating Realistic Video Updates: To update the visuals, we created an avatar of the professor using AI tools trained on his original footage. The new script was fed into the system, generating video segments of the avatar delivering the updates. While the AI-produced content was highly accurate, subtle refinements were made using specialized tools to perfect facial expressions and natural delivery, ensuring the final output was indistinguishable from the original.

Through this process, we didn’t just fix errors—we scaled content to meet our client’s specific needs, creating a more cohesive and customized learning experience for students. The use of AI allowed us to efficiently generate high-quality, tailored variations of the original material, empowering professors to deliver their courses exactly as envisioned. While AI tools are not yet adept at creating content entirely from scratch, they are invaluable for enhancing, refining, and scaling professional-quality materials. Blended Teaching is leveraging this capability to set a new standard for educational content, enabling educators to connect with their students in ways that are engaging, relevant, and impactful.