Matt Sonnati
CEO of Inokufu
Inokufu’s mission is to build the largest database of Learning Objects. How is the project going and how does your Becomino solution work?
Matt Sonnati: We couldn’t find a search engine to identify the best educational resources, so we created it.
In 2018, while discussing dyslexia, Benjamin and I realized that while the amount and variety of educational resources had exploded in less than 15 years, most educational programs were not taking advantage of them (or not much). Quality content is now readily available in a variety of formats. However, easy access is not enough to transform the knowledge acquired into a fully mastered and professional skill. Universities and training organizations were reluctant to use these resources, fearing their unmastered quality. In order for them to integrate these resources into their programs, we had to provide them with better (meta)data.
We needed a technology capable of finely characterizing all the metadata of a learning object and thus determining which activity to propose to a learner, at the right time, according to his objectives and needs. This is what gave birth to Inokufu Search and allowed us to create our database of over 3M learning objects, accessible via API and our plugins (Chrome, Safari, Moodle soon).
Becomino.com was the first use case for our Inokufu Search technology. This application helps people to discover the jobs in tension in France. This project is supported by the “Plan d’Investissement en Compétences” and “Pôle Emploi Auvergne Rhône-Alpes”. We are very grateful for this opportunity and to put our technology to work on the societal challenge of the job crisis.
What role does Inokufu play in a world where there is more and more information available for Higher Education, Research and Innovation institutions and EdTech actors?
M.S.: Originally, the purpose of using our database of learning objects was only educational. However, since 2020, we started indexing training catalogs such as those of “Pôle Emploi” and “MonCompteFormation”.
During these indexations, we identified some anomalies in the datasets that we reported to the authorities. The sharing of our data analysis on the evolution of the continuing education market in France was very well received by the training organization community. That’s when Benjamin [Parmentier, co-founder of Inokufu] and I realized that our data had not only a pedagogical value (targeting teachers and trainers) but also an economic value (targeting managers of training organizations and continuing education departments in universities).
Then, we developed a suite of tools under the brand name Inokufu Analytics that allows training providers to analyze market trends, find new opportunities, optimize their training offer, or prepare the XML file that allows them to update their training offer on “MonCompteFormation”.
What are Inokufu’s ambitions for the coming years?
M.S.: After migrating to a 100% cloud infrastructure in 2021, we are now in a phase of industrialization of our technology, with the goal of reaching, by 2025, more than 250 million learning objects in our database.
The company grew from a start-up with no office to a brilliant team working remotely in France and abroad. Today, we actively promote interoperability across the EdTech sector, notably through our involvement in EdTech France, the Data Space Education & Skills (DASES) Gaia-X working groups and Prometheus-X.
By enabling the flow of learner-centred educational data, we firmly believe that this will improve the quality of the data collected and thus the quality of learning experiences. This will create a virtuous circle, where our AI-powered data processing pipelines will handle hundreds of millions of anonymized and aggregated educational data every day, enabling Inokufu to continuously improve and deliver better learning experiences around the world.
