Finishing second in April’s Canyon Challenge, the entrepreneurial competition at Grand Canyon University, did nothing to sway Shyam Bodicherla’s confidence that his artificial intelligence-aided Woof Tech company would change the lives of professors and teachers who spend hours grading homework and tests.
“Just for the record, second or first place doesn’t matter to me,” Bodicherla said. “I still believe in my product. I’m the type of guy who says, ‘If I don’t like it and my company produces it, I will leave my company.’
“I have to personally like it in order for it to be out there.”
There could be a marriage between GCU and Bodicherla, who graduated from the university with a bachelor’s degree in entrepreneurship/entrepreneurial studies. GCU has selected 10 professors to use Acadex Mini, Woof Tech’s platform, which grades student papers at an unbelievably fast rate and enables educators to devote more time to assisting students.
And if this succeeds, “then we can just plug it into Halo (Learn) for teachers,” Bodicheria said of the proprietary learning management system used by GCU.
Bodicherla already has his group of supporters. GCU adjunct professor Tim Blake is a customer, and Bodicherla said the Deer Valley Unified School District is “super excited” to use it.
“I’m not too concerned if a school isn’t interested,” Bodicherla said. “At the end of the day, AI is here to say. And whether schools want to use it or not, it’s up to them.
“But you have to be on the train. You have to jump in. If you’re being left behind, your school won’t make it. You have to be ahead of the curve. And I’m 90% confident that GCU will use this product.”
Canyon Ventures Founding Director Robert Vera recommended Bodicherla for the Hong Kong University Science and Technology Entrepreneurship and Hult Prize competitions, which will distribute up to $2 million in prizes.
The prize money is more than the $1,500 award Bodicherla received for his second-place finish at Canyon Challenge. He impressed a Canyon Challenge audience with a video display that showed 20 papers graded in less than 40 seconds, with a 2.5 to 5% margin for error.
"AI is transforming how we work, learn and communicate,” Vera said. Organizations are exploring ways to integrate AI to enhance operational efficiencies and service delivery.
“When deployed in schools and universities, the Acadex AI grading tool can alleviate the administrative burden of paper grading for teachers, allowing them to devote more time to educating and mentoring students."
With AI at the forefront of technology, Bodicherla believes the potential impact of such a time-saving product could be staggering.
“(Vera) kept talking about referring back to the iPhone,” Bodicherla said. “The iPhone back then was a piece of technology nobody knew that they needed to have yet. Apple still created it.
“Today, you can’t live without a smartphone, in general. He believes this is one of those products that, even if teachers don’t know that they’re missing out on, when it comes in, they can’t live without it.”
Bodicherla continues to make modifications to the app since the Canyon Challenge, constantly trying to improve it.
“Time is precious,” said Bodicherla, mindful that many instructors lament the number of hours devoted to grading.
It takes two minutes or less to set up a Woof Tech account, and Acadex Mini offers a limited free account for new users, available forever with no trial period or demo constraints.
More enticing for professors and teachers is that they can drop files into the system and have the papers graded in less than 10 seconds with accuracy. The Acadex Mini is programmed to grade essays as well as multiple-choice quizzes.
“You can see it all happening in real time, and that’s a lot of time savings,” Bodicherla said. “It’s really easy to use, and it’s far better than what our competitors are putting out currently. We’re at least three years ahead of what they’re putting out.”
He said his plan originated from a discussion he had last fall with professor Paul Waterman, who ran the course for students to earn a Disciplined Agile Scrum Master certificate, which allows students to become project managers.
Bodicherla shared that he was looking to delve into a big project. Waterman told Bodicherla that ChatGPT and another chatbot, Gemini, were on the market and asked him if he could put prompts that could help him assign grades to essays and other tests.
“What took our competitors three years to accomplish took us three months,” said Bodicherla. “And that’s what became of the project management aspect. We were able to delegate tasks very efficiently.”
Acedex was showcased at the Canyon Challenge, and recent upgrades have included DOCX, which encompasses 96% of every file type used in every school, along with Amazon Web Services integration, which fortifies security and prevents the website from crashing.
Bodicherla plans to unveil the Acedex Mini 2.0 this fall. This platform will feature an advanced AI detection method to improve its grading capabilities.
“Constant improvement, my friend,” Bodicherla said.
GCU News Senior Writer Mark Gonzales can be reached at [email protected]
***
Related content:
GCU News: Listening to mom pays off for Canyon Challenge winner
