Socratic (Google) Explained

Socratic
Parent:	Google LLC
Type:	App, website
Company Type:	Subsidiary
Num Users:	11 million (estimated)^[1]
Author:	Chris Pedregal, Shreyans Bhansali
Launch Date:	2013
Industry:	Education, Internet, Mobile Learning

Socratic is an education tech company that offers a mobile app for students. The app uses AI technology to help students with their homework by providing educational resources like videos, definitions, Q&A, links and more.^[2]

Socratic was first launched as a web product in 2013 by Chris Pedregal and Shreyans Bhansali, in New York City, United States. They launched their app under the same name in 2016.

In March 2018, Socratic was acquired by Google for an undisclosed amount. The acquisition was made public in August 2019, when the Founder and CTO (now engineering manager) Shreyans Bhansali announced that the company had joined Google. The wake of news was accompanied by a redesigned iOS app.^[3]

Starting from August 2018, Socratic became no longer available for user contributions; past contributions were kept, but it was no longer possible to ask, answer, or edit questions.^[4]

Technology

The Socratic app utilizes artificial intelligence to accurately predict which concepts will help a student solve their question. Over months, millions of real student questions were analyzed and classified. Then the app uses that data to guess on future questions and provide specific education content.^{[5] [6]}

The app works by letting students take a photo of a homework question,^[7] a feature that was later added to Google Lens. Using Optical character recognition (OCR), the app is able to read their photo and classify it using the technology described above. Students receive various "cards" in the app with different learning resources such as definitions, YouTube videos, Q&A, and original content and illustrations written by the Socratic.org web community.^[8]

In January 2017, Socratic added additional Math features to the app, including step-by-step equation help and graphs.^[9]

Subjects

There is currently a total of four main groups of subjects on Socratic:^[1]

• Science
  • Anatomy and Physiology
  • Astronomy
  • Astrophysics
  • Biology
  • Chemistry
  • Earth Science
  • Environmental Science
  • Organic Chemistry
  • Physics
• Math
  • Algebra
  • Calculus
  • Geometry
  • Prealgebra
  • Precalculus
  • Statistics
  • Trigonometry
• Social Science
  • Psychology
• Humanities
  • English Grammar
  • U.S. History
  • World History

See also

• Boundless
• Codecademy
• Khan Academy
• Quora
• ResearchGate
• Stack Exchange
• Brainly

Further reading

• Web site: Socratic.org Goes from Idea to $1.5M in Six Months (EdSurge News). October 8, 2013. EdSurge.
• Web site: Did Socratic.org Raise $6 Million?. John. Biggs. TechCrunch. March 25, 2015.
• Web site: Socratic. Sean. Flynn. March 25, 2015. seanmflynn.com.

Notes and References

1. Web site: Socratic. Socratic.org.
2. News: Making learning way easier — Introducing the Socratic app. Bhansali. Shreyans. 2016-07-14. Building Socratic. 2016-11-09.
3. Web site: Perez . Sarah . Google discloses its acquisition of mobile learning app Socratic as it relaunches on iOS . TechCrunch . August 16, 2019 . TechCrunch . 8 December 2019.
4. Web site: Socratic.org website will close to new contributions. blog.socratic.org/. 2019-01-02.
5. News: Socratic Application Allows Students To Post Homework Questions, Get Answers. The Daily Nexus. 2016-11-09.
6. Web site: Socratic Used Extensive User Testing to Build Powerful Free "Digital Tutor" App — Emerging Education Technologies. emergingedtech.com. August 23, 2016 . 2016-11-09.
7. News: How to Make Learning Easier than Cheating (EdSurge News). EdSurge. en-US. 2016-11-09.
8. News: Making learning way easier — Introducing the Socratic app. Bhansali. Shreyans. 2016-07-14. Building Socratic. 2016-11-09.
9. Homework Help App, Socratic, Launches Math Features. newswire.com. en. 2017-01-18.