How is AI transforming the way we learn? Edtech firm Chegg’s new CEO explains

Nathan Schultz, the newly announced CEO of the global edtech company, Chegg shares insights with Gulf Business into the company’s major pivot towards artificial intelligence and discusses the significant role the UAE plays in the company’s vision for higher education growth and innovation.

The CEO of the California-based edtech firm, explains how the company’s new AI-powered personalised learning assistant can create tailored learning journeys that empower students regardless of their goals, levels, or learning styles.

Tell us how excited you are about the opportunity of your new role as CEO of Chegg.

I’m hugely excited. Over the last 16 years, Chegg has become one of the largest, most accessible, and impactful online education services for students around the world.

I’m proud to be part of the leadership team that drove many of those changes – initially with the shift to a completely digital learning platform, and then helping to embed AI into nearly every facet of our business as COO. So, it’s a huge privilege to be at the helm, and especially to follow a CEO like Dan Rosensweig, whom I’ve been fortunate to work with for many years.

We have built an amazing team, and I am excited about the opportunity to revolutionise how we serve students with our proprietary AI tools, delivering better learning outcomes for students and working to increase the value of Chegg for our investors.

What’s the future potential of AI when it comes to learning?

There is enormous potential and we can already see the shape of what’s coming shortly. The development of AI is a huge step towards delivering on the promise of personalised learning – which, despite being a concept much discussed in edtech circles, has never looked completely realisable before AI.

Students could have a learning assistant in their pocket that anticipates their needs and adapts to their strengths and weaknesses. GenAI tools for learning, when fine-tuned and evaluated rigorously to align with education outcomes, can respond instantaneously and in a more natural, back-and-forth conversational interface with students.

Conversational AI designed for learning can recognise what type of question a student is struggling with and provide the most relevant and effective response – for example, discerning when a procedural question needs to be broken down step-by-step or when a conceptual question could be illustrated with a real-world example.

Conversational AI can encourage more active engagement by suggesting prompts that students might ask to deepen their learning. Guiding students to create useful follow-up prompts will also teach them how to interact with GenAI systems.

This is more important than ever, as many students today are juggling their studies with work and family responsibilities. They need learning support that can adapt to their needs, no matter their goal, level or style.

The higher education market is growing fast in the UAE. At the same time, the UAE AI market is set to reach almost $2bn by 2026. Why do you believe the UAE is perfectly positioned to benefit from the opportunities that AI brings to learning?

The UAE has been at the forefront of AI for years – well before the advent of Generative AI – and is now thought to be one of the three most important countries globally in the field. Not only is it home to the world’s first-ever specialist AI university (the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence), but it was also one of the first countries worldwide to develop a strategic national approach to AI policy and education.

In 2024, chatbots began rolling out in schools. So, the UAE government and citizens understand the potential of this technology well – they know how important a role it can play in its future.

By creating platforms that take advantage of AI’s educational potential – particularly in the development of personalised learning – companies such as Chegg can help the UAE pursue its AI leadership goals for 2031 and beyond.

Tell us about the new AI-powered learning assistant Chegg is developing – describe how it could transform how students in the UAE and the wider Gulf Cooperation Council can learn.

We envision that Chegg’s platform will allow students to learn through guided back-and-forth conversations that deepen understanding and adapt to students’ evolving knowledge and skills. Following up responses with suggested question prompts that students might ask next will encourage deeper and more active engagement with learning, as well as demonstrating to students how to interact with AI systems.

We anticipate the platform will also let students know if they are learning at optimal times in their day, suggest students engage in more practice rather than relying only on review, and encourage students to push through difficult concepts to build learning resilience. We will support this by automatically generating high-quality learning aids such as practice tests, study guides and multi-modal instructional content that is personalised to the specific student need.

How is Chegg to leverage AI to deliver its offerings and services?

Our unique assets, such as our 100 million plus pieces of learning content, our reach with learners around the globe, and our utilisation of the many subject matter experts, come together to deliver the most effective learning experience possible. As we develop an education-focused AI platform, we believe it is essential to own our large language models and quality assurance layer. This allows Chegg to verticalise our AI for education specifically and is essential in our pursuit to control quality and accuracy at a lower cost than leveraging generic AI platforms.

Over the next few quarters, we are focused on rolling out enhancements and features that deliver an even richer personalised learning experience. Whether that means real-time conversational support with our AI learning tools, generating flashcards, generating practice problems, or creating a focused study guide.

Our platform is designed to anticipate, generate, and deliver personalised solutions, which we expect will increase our value to students and expand the audiences we can serve in a cost-efficient way.

To give you a sense of how quickly this is scaling, in Q1 of this year we had over nine million questions asked compared to 3.9 million new questions asked at the same time last year. And, as more questions are asked, we generate more content, which drives more traffic, which we believe will lead to new customers in future quarters.

There are many general-purpose AI tools (such as ChatGPT) when it comes to learning – how does Chegg differ from those?

GenAI has captured the imagination of students worldwide and a recent global survey shows that 40 per cent of university students have used general-purpose AI tools for their studies. However, despite students increasingly turning to general-purpose GenAI tools, they remain apprehensive when it comes to using them for learning.

The same survey shows that of the 40 per cent of undergraduate students worldwide who have used GenAI for their studies, 47 per cent are concerned about receiving inaccurate information. The education environment demands a more focused approach to AI.

The top priority should be to create new subject-specific LLMs trained on educational content and large data sets of actual student interactions – which are then fine-tuned by human subject matter experts and rated by students themselves to help ensure the quality of the answers provided are accurate, tailored, empathetic, and contextually relevant.

That’s why Chegg is launching our proprietary AI platform, including 26 subject-specific LLMs, all trained on Chegg’s 100 million plus pieces of learning content, created by over 150,000 Chegg subject-matter experts, designed with learning and accuracy in mind, and rooted in learning science.

This correlates with student demand, as 55 per cent of students around the world say they would like to see GenAI tools involve human expertise in generating answers.

How can Chegg’s new AI-powered learning assistant supplement existing efforts within the UAE to integrate AI into learning?

The UAE is planning to roll out AI-powered chatbots in schools, which provides an ideal opportunity to help pupils take their studies to the next level. In higher education, student adoption of GenAI has been swift: according to a study by Anthology, nearly one-third (32 per cent) of UAE students use GenAI tools frequently (at least once a week), and of those students surveyed 56 per cent believe it will revolutionise teaching and learning methods.

Rapid advancements are underway and, as large language models verticalise for education, the next wave of AI-powered learning tools can both serve as an invaluable supplement to a teacher’s classroom activities and elevate the way students learn – if used correctly. These innovations and more can support students on their individualized learning journey.
As the application of artificial intelligence in education emerges, the role of the teacher remains critical. A student’s unique developmental path cannot be facilitated solely by algorithms and large language models.

However, when AI tools are deployed thoughtfully and strategically, they can deliver a personalised learning experience that adapts to the pace and needs of each student, offering supplemental support when and where most needed.

We know Chegg runs the Global Student Prize, and it’s exciting to see UAE students have been finalists over the years. Why did Chegg launch the Global Student Prize?

In 2021, Chegg.org in partnership with the Varkey Foundation created the Global Student Prize to shine a light on students who are making an impact on learning, improving the lives of their peers, and contributing to society beyond. Every year, a US$100,000 award goes to one exceptional student chosen from thousands of applicants worldwide.

At the same time, however, the prize draws attention to the efforts of extraordinary students everywhere. Together, they are reshaping our world for the better and acting as champions of change.

The UAE always brings to the fore amazing students who are inspiring young people all over the world. For example, in the prize’s inaugural year, UAE student Lamya Butt was named a top 10 finalist for helping to provide ICT devices for thousands of students in Dubai.

The 2022 and 2023 editions of the Global Student Prize also saw incredible UAE students named as finalists. 2024 will be the fourth year of the Global Student Prize and we are looking forward to seeing who our amazing finalists will be this year.

Is Chegg starting to work directly with schools?

Yes, we are excited to start piloting partnerships with universities in the US, allowing us to support even more students. The vast majority (89 per cent) of our US users say Chegg helps them better understand the concepts they are studying, so we are thrilled that educational institutions may offer their students free access to our platform.

We would love to pilot more partnerships with universities in the UAE and the wider GCC region so that we can work together to deliver even better learning outcomes.

What is the value of partnering with universities?

When the UAE government announced plans for a rating system for universities in 2017, it stated its clear commitment to reduce university dropouts and ensure higher education institutions were providing students with the support they need. This resulted in the National Higher Education Institutions Classification Framework, launched recently.

We know universities can sometimes struggle with student persistence and retention. We are confident that establishing institutional partnerships can help solve these problems and make us a valued partner within the education ecosystem.