Course Hero’s John Peacock: How AI Is Disrupting Our Industry, and What We Can Do About It
An Interview With Cynthia Corsetti
Adapt your team, along with your product and strategy. Develop your team into the team it needs to be to meet the disruption and go beyond it.
Artificial Intelligence is no longer the future; it is the present. It’s reshaping landscapes, altering industries, and transforming the way we live and work. With its rapid advancement, AI is causing disruption — for better or worse — in every field imaginable. While it promises efficiency and growth, it also brings challenges and uncertainties that professionals and businesses must navigate. What can one do to pivot if AI is disrupting their industry? As part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing John Peacock.
As CEO of Course Hero, an online learning platform for course-specific study resources, John leads business strategy and product with the mission of transforming studying into a seamless experience for every course. Previously, John served in product management roles overseeing the company’s Q&A Marketplace, Textbook Solutions, Mobile App, and Literature products for over three years. He specializes in growth, building, and leading high-performing product and business teams.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series. Before we dive into our discussion our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share with us the backstory about what brought you to your specific career path?
I spent a good portion of my career in the gaming industry. More specifically, making games. I really enjoyed the ability to engage both the left and right side of my brains to make something unique and entertaining that others would enjoy.
After being in the gaming industry for about ten years and having run my own mobile gaming company for the majority of that time, I was looking for a new challenge. Course Hero had a really compelling vision, mission, and amazing team. Over the past five years here at Course Hero, I’ve had the opportunity to work on various parts of the business and in different roles and I feel very proud of the work that we do to provide better online study help for students so that they can graduate confident and prepared!
What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?
At our core, Course Hero is a platform with a rich legacy of empowering students to excel in their unique academic pursuits. What sets us apart is our unwavering commitment to providing tailored, course-specific study resources that ensure every student has the tools they need to succeed.
We are constantly talking to students to get feedback and to gain a better understanding of student needs; in a recent conversation with a student, she pointed out how she relies on Course Hero’s tools in her research and to help her validate concepts by looking up documents and chatting with our pdf functionality. She talked to us about how she comes to Course Hero to get unstuck on certain assignments. This demonstrates how our AI tools are creating opportunities for students to explore topics further, to understand their own writing and critical thinking processes, and to engage in owning their education.
But our dedication doesn’t stop there. We are equally passionate about supporting educators, offering them opportunities to enhance their teaching skills and strategies through collaboration with fellow instructors and subject matter experts.
By fostering this symbiotic relationship between students and educators, we create a thriving educational ecosystem where everyone can achieve their fullest potential. Our unique approach ensures that we don’t just follow educational trends; we set them, driving innovation and excellence in learning.
You are a successful business leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?
In my professional journey, I’ve come to deeply value and strive to embody three core traits: persistence, optimism, and adaptability. I firmly believe that the true measure of a business leader’s long-term success lies not in how they navigate triumphs, but in how they handle challenges and setbacks. It is in these critical moments that persistence, optimism, and adaptability prove to be invaluable.
Reflecting on my entrepreneurial journey before joining Course Hero, the company I founded experienced numerous highs and lows over six and a half years. Despite the turbulent path, it was our relentless persistence, unwavering optimism, and adaptive strategies that ultimately led us to a successful acquisition. Without these traits ingrained in our team’s ethos, achieving such a milestone would have been impossible.
Let’s now move to the main point of our discussion about AI. Can you explain how AI is disrupting your industry? Is this disruption hurting or helping your bottom line?
There’s a lot of talk about generative AI disrupting the education technology industry. But we’ve ridden out that disruption by staying focused on our customer: the students who use our platform. I prefer to see AI as a technology that enables us to fulfill even better our mission of widespread student success. What’s made Course Hero such a valuable study tool over the years has been our library of over 100M documents. For almost two decades, students have found that library to be invaluable. What AI gives us is a reliable librarian for the library, one who can point out helpful new course-specific resources, aid students in understanding their assignments better, write better, and study better for their exams.
We’re introducing students to new tools every quarter. And we’re listening to teachers, too, to find out what students really need, what tools will really work. I’m excited and optimistic for what this will mean for Course Hero in the years to come.
Which specific AI technology has had the most significant impact on your industry?
LLMs have been the most impactful at this time. We are, however, constantly benchmarking the best AI models from companies for accuracy across a wide array of academic subjects that our users need help with. In addition we have been evaluating and integrating new techniques from the academic research in AI and education.
Can you share a pivotal moment when you recognized the profound impact AI would have on your sector?
In the realm of online learning assistance, we understand that students prioritize three key factors: accuracy, speed, and affordability. With the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, the benchmarks for speed and affordability were instantly elevated, while its accuracy continues to improve with each update. This tool has become incredibly powerful and valuable for students.
By integrating ChatGPT with our extensive library of course-specific content and our network of expert tutors, Course Hero is uniquely positioned to offer students an unparalleled, seamless study experience. This combination enables us to deliver a level of educational support that has never been seen before.
How are you preparing your workforce for the integration of AI, and what skills do you believe will be most valuable in an AI-enhanced future?
Our product development team is LLM/AI focused; all our engineers — not just our machine learning engineers — use AI. We have organized Hackathon and events to encourage team members to learn and innovate from one another. We also offer education reimbursement as well as professional development workshops.
What are the biggest challenges in upskilling your workforce for an AI-centric future?
One of the biggest challenges is addressing the varying levels of familiarity and enthusiasm about AI among team members. This requires a tailored approach to training and professional development across the company. Fortunately, our workforce is largely eager to learn and grow, and many are embracing the opportunity.
What ethical considerations does AI introduce into your industry, and how are you tackling these concerns?
Across the industry, there are growing concerns about AI’s impact on learning, critical thinking, and academic integrity. At Course Hero, we take these concerns very seriously and address them through a multifaceted approach.
First, we develop AI products designed to foster critical thinking by encouraging students to critically evaluate the information they receive and explore answers more deeply. Second, we collaborate directly with educators to help them effectively integrate AI technologies into their classrooms. We provide professional development, classroom-ready resources, and personalized support for faculty members who have questions or concerns about AI. Lastly, we engage with our Product Advisory Community, composed of high school and college faculty, to guide our product development and ensure it meets the educational needs and standards of today’s academic environment.
What are your “Five Things You Need To Do, If AI Is Disrupting Your Industry”?
1. Understand how generative AI disrupts your industry. Start by thoroughly analyzing how generative AI impacts your industry. Determine whether it affects your distribution channels, core product offerings, customer service, or other areas. This understanding is crucial as it will guide your strategic response.
2. Be opportunistic vs defensive. Instead of viewing AI as a threat, look for ways to harness its potential to enhance your product or service. Ask yourself how generative AI can improve your offerings and boost your competitive edge. One example is how we have partnered with educators to help them incorporate AI in the classroom. Presenting to educators how they can use Course Hero AI Study Tools starting with the ability to chat with their docs as a teaching assistant. By focusing on opportunities rather than threats, you can stay ahead of the curve and offer superior value to your customers.
3. Test, learn, iterate. Embrace a culture of experimentation. Generative AI is a relatively new frontier, and industries are still exploring its full potential. Conduct pilot projects, gather data, and analyze the results. Learn from these experiments and iterate your approach based on what works and what doesn’t. For example, talk to your customers, hear what the needs are in your industry and market, develop projects to address their needs and test an iterate via A/B testing so that you can learn and adjust as needed.
4. Think about what AI can’t do well (and likely won’t do well). Identify the areas where AI struggles and emphasize your strengths in these domains. AI might excel in data processing and automation but may fall short in areas requiring human creativity, emotional intelligence, or complex decision-making. Double down on these human-centric aspects to differentiate your business.
5. Adapt your team, along with your product and strategy. Develop your team into the team it needs to be to meet the disruption and go beyond it.
What are the most common misconceptions about AI within your industry, and how do you address them?
A lot of the misconceptions are related to academic Integrity. As mentioned earlier, we take those concerns seriously and are focusing our efforts on creating AI products that are instructionally meaningful and ultimately deliver on our mission to transform studying into a seamless experience for every course.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Do you have a story about how that was relevant in your life?
For my 11th birthday, my father gifted me a rock inscribed with an inspirational quote on it:“Some people make things happen, some people watch things happen, while others wonder what has happened”. That quote always comes to mind when I’m making big life decisions and was one of the driving forces behind why I started my own company.
Off-topic, but I’m curious. As someone steering the ship, what thoughts or concerns often keep you awake at night? How do those thoughts influence your daily decision-making process?
Actually on topic! The advent of generative AI has been a transformative and disruptive force in education. Our mission to create a seamless studying experience for every course is now more attainable than ever. The potential to make significant strides toward this mission and redefine the standards of online learning is a constant source of inspiration and energy for our team.
You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
This is not the most widely impactful idea and certainly not an original one, but I believe digital detoxing is so important. I’d start a movement to encourage more people to digital detox from time to time for the relationships of those nearest to us as well as the health benefits it can provide. Something I’d like to practice more of.
How can our readers further follow you online?
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnlindenpeacock/
Thank you for the time you spent sharing these fantastic insights. We wish you only continued success in your great work!
About the Interviewer: Cynthia Corsetti is an esteemed executive coach with over two decades in corporate leadership and 11 years in executive coaching. Author of the upcoming book, “Dark Drivers,” she guides high-performing professionals and Fortune 500 firms to recognize and manage underlying influences affecting their leadership. Beyond individual coaching, Cynthia offers a 6-month executive transition program and partners with organizations to nurture the next wave of leadership excellence.
