Two Eastlake students build AI tutor for AP classes
Two students at Eastlake High School have built a generative AI chatbot that can tutor students who are taking college-level courses as part of the Advanced Placement (AP) program.
The AI bot, called ProfessorAI, was launched on April 20 and currently has over 250 active users, including students, teachers, and school administrators.
ProfessorAI was developed by Pradyu Kandala and Abhay Chebium, who are both juniors at Eastlake. What motivated Kandala and Chebium to create this bot was the realization that they, along with their classmates, could not get enough help for the AP courses they were taking.
In an interview with the Sammamish Independent, Kandala identified two key challenges. He said the high cost of tutors, ranging from $40 to $60 per hour, poses a financial burden for many students. Additionally, the limited availability and flexibility of tutors make it difficult for students to schedule help when they need it the most.
“Every time, every single day, when I was at school talking to people, it was always about, ‘hey, how was that test?’ ‘I’m really struggling in this class’,” Kandala said. “And all of these conversations were about AP courses and every single one of those conversations always led back to the core point, which is, it’s really hard to get help for these courses.”
The two students built their bot using ChatGPT and trained it by inputting reference textbooks for most AP courses, including math, English, science, and history courses. Currently, AP language courses have been excluded from the ProfessorAI.
Besides answering subject-related questions from users, ProfessorAI also allows users to go in and review their class, unit by unit, and topic by topic. Moreover, students learn through a step-by-step process by questioning the bot and getting answers.
“We can support graphs, equations, tables, and diagrams,” Kandala said. “All of these which are very deep, we can help students answer and understand any of their homework questions and problems they have.”
However, ProfessorAI has its limitations, such as the inability to solve problems with graphs and diagrams with 100% accuracy, especially extremely complicated ones.
“Currently, all LLM providers including ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini have yet to crack this solution and we are in the same boat,” Kandala said. “We are looking into third-party providers and custom in-house solutions to address this.”
ProfessorAI operates on a freemium model. Under the free plan, users have access to ten messages per day and one class. For those seeking additional features, the Scholar plan is available for $15 per month, offering 50 messages per day and access to 3 classes. Alternatively, the Elite plan, priced at $30 a month, provides unlimited access to both messages and classes.
Jeff Utecht, a Seattle-based education consultant, tested ProfessorAI and identified some strengths and unique values of the product.
“I found out that when students prompt it for a question, it actually searches textbooks and gives you relevant information from textbooks, including giving you the actual page number in the textbook that it got information from,” Utecht said. “The second thing that is really unique of the product is that they found a way to overlap a bunch of different GPTs, so it’s not pulling just from ChatGPT, but from two or three different GPTs to give you a better response.”
Kandala and Chebium are trying to introduce their bot to school districts, and are currently seeking to understand the attitudes and guidelines that districts have regarding AI usage.
“Our mission is to provide educational resources to all students regardless of their location and socio-economic status,” Kandala said. “Which answers how we can make a truly bigger impact on the world, and how we can use the latest technologies to do that.”
If you are interested in ProfessorAI, please go to their website.
