 From Seattle, Washington, it's theCUBE, covering AWS Imagine, brought to you by Amazon Web Services. Hey, welcome back, everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in downtown Seattle at AWS Imagine EDU. It's a brand new show. Actually, this is the second year we were here last year or two. Really, it's part of public sector and really addressing education. And education is K through 12. It's higher education. It's community college. That and so much more and we're really excited to have our next guest. The company's been in this space for a long time but really driving a lot of digital transformation internally as well as with their customers. And we have Andrew Gilfillan. He is the VP of Product Management for Pearson. Andrew, great to see you. Great to be here. Thanks for having me. All right, so give us a kind of a quick overview on Pearson for people that aren't familiar with the company. Sure, so Pearson's a global education company operating in 70 countries around the world. And our mission is really to help people progress their lives through learning. Now things are changing up. Changing up a little bit. You're here, you had a big announcement earlier today during the keynote about a new product called Rebel. Pearson Rebel. Pearson Rebel's been around for a little while. So give us kind of a background and then what's changed now. Right, so Rebel first launched in 2014. So it's now been around for a little more than five years. And really it's at the forefront of our transformation to digital course materials. Rebel's intended to replace the traditional textbook and give students the opportunity to have a fully digital interactive learning experience where they can read, practice, study, anywhere, anytime. So is it basically an app that integrates all the different types of material that they're going to use in their kind of day-to-day interaction engagement with that class? Yeah, so it incorporates all of their course materials. So their readings, their assignments, they can access it through their computer or through a mobile app, which is great because it enables them to learn anywhere. We know that students are on the go. Lots of priorities. They're squeezing in their course work while they're juggling jobs, families, activities, everything else, so. It's pretty interesting because you talk about it being pretty mobile heavy, mobile centric because that's one of the big attributes of mobile. We check our phones when we're in line at the grocery store and you get a couple minutes here and you get a couple minutes here. As opposed to when you used to sit down at the computer and have kind of dedicated attention span. So you're seeing that on the education side with the kids and the way they actually engage with their curriculum. Absolutely. I mean, we have to meet students where they are. We have to bring learning to them so they can learn on their terms. And does it work out? I mean, old school people like me are like, come on, you guys got to sit down and concentrate for 20 minutes, 30 minutes on a particular topic. But you find it works for them? It does. And actually what we know from research is that students actually learn better when the material is broken down into smaller chunks. And so Revell is able to break the material down into smaller pieces. I'm really optimized that the learning provide immediate feedback for them. And students can kind of stop, pick up where they left off later down the road. You know, if they were studying during a break at their job right now and they're going to pick back up when they get home, they can do that. Interesting. Okay, so now what does Alexa have to do with this? What's the opportunity? How did this come about in the first place? And then what did you guys do? Yeah, so we're super excited to be able to partner with Amazon. Again, our goal is to really make learning more engaging and more convenient for more learners. And the partnership with Amazon to bring the Revell skill for Alexa is another step in that direction. So Alexa really enables students to engage in their learning on their own terms. We had one student who tested the skill for us while it was in development, who was juggling a family, taking a full course load, and had a full-time job. And she used Alexa to listen to her reading while she was preparing meals for her family. And it was a great way to really show that Alexa made possible her to fit her coursework in when she had time to do it. So it's really just connecting her Alexa device at home into her Revell account. Yeah, so you link your Revell account with your Alexa, with your Amazon Alexa account, and it allows you to stay up to date on when your assignments are due. It allows you to listen to the text. You can change devices and pick up where you left off on a new device in a different location at a different time. So how many different kind of actions will it do? So there are a number of commands. It's really focused on audio playback, on understanding when your assignments are due, being able to play sort of what the current assignment is, or to know when the next assignment is due. So it's still really focused on sort of the key activities that a student's going to participate in when they're engaging with their Revell products. Okay, and do you see, does it open up your product manager, you know, kind of a whole new host of potential capabilities using voice as an interface versus text or keyboard? Yeah, so we know that students are mobile. We know that the sort of current generation of students, what we call the iGen's grew up in a world where internet's always been a thing. And so we really want to take advantage of all of the tools that are out there to deliver more engaging experiences, right? And to really be able to reach more learners in really positive ways. Right, and then who's your customer? Who's your customer usually like the school entity? So that's a great question. So historically our customer really was, the student is the end user, the educator ultimately chose what they used or what they expected the student to use. Increasingly, Pearson's transforming and really looking at institutions as customers as well. And so we have tiers of customers. It's the institution, it's the educator, and it's the student. And we have to meet the needs of all three of those things. One of the great things about Revel is, not only do we believe that it drives better outcomes for the student, but it allows us to deliver a better product at a more affordable price. Right, and do you find that the engagement with the application, because it's still basically the same application under the cover, significantly is significantly different with a voice interaction, or I don't know if you have enough data yet to make an assertion, but I'm just curious. I think it's too early to tell. I mean, certainly we're optimistic about the promise of voice being a part of the experience. It's not going to be the whole experience, but it will be an important part of the experience, and it will really enable more flexibility for students to use the tool in a variety of ways. It's just interesting to be with the whole voice thing, that you get emails, old people like us, get emails telling you what you should ask your voice. Well, you should ask Alexa, hey, have you thought about asking Alexa something more than just turn on the radio, or what's the weather? Tell me a joke. You know, it's amazing. I think when you watch students interact with these tools, it's so natural and so intuitive for them. They've grown up with mobile devices. They've grown up with the internet. They've grown up sort of with a new paradigm, and they expect that their learning experiences are going to adapt in those ways, in sort of the ways that they're adapting. Right. Last question here, we're here at AWS Imagine. Obviously Teresa's super passionate about this area. Andrew's super passionate about this area. What's it meant for you guys? How's Amazon been, or AWS as a partner? Yep. You know, still kind of early days for them in this type of area, but clearly there's a lot of resources being put behind it. Yes, so Amazon's been a great partner, and Alexa is the revel skill for Alexa is sort of our new launch, but we've partnered with Amazon and used Amazon web services underpinning a lot of our product experiences, including Revol. So they've been a great partner, and I think this is an example of just extending that one more step, and we look forward to be able to look even further to see how we can work together to improve learning for students. I love it. 200 year old company using voice. That's right. All right, Andrew. Well, thanks for taking a few minutes out of your day, and congratulations, and we look forward to watching it progress as you get more data coming out of that thing. Yeah, thank you. All right, he's Andrew. I'm Jeff. You're watching theCUBE. We're at AWS Imagine in downtown Seattle. Thanks for watching.