Y Combinator-backed Mimir speeds up feedback with automated grading for professors

In the academic world, there are at least a few things that are constant: You’ll attend class, have homework, and take an examination to test how much knowledge you’ve retained. But a major variable is how quickly you receive feedback about those assignments in order to further your learning.

Technology has come to the rescue — or at least one startup thinks it has the solution when it comes to those looking to be computer scientists. Called Mimir (after the Norse god of knowledge and wisdom), it’s a platform aimed at enabling colleges and universities to create better engineers.

Founded by Prahasith Veluvolu, Jacobi Petrucciani, and Colton Voege, Mimir enables professors to upload assignments each semester that students need to complete. Mimir will handle grading and then log the findings into a separate grade book system like Blackboard. The platform also tracks which students may need more tutoring and those who may be cheating or plagiarizing. Professors can set parameters for students as well as configure projects so the system will know how to grade appropriately.

Backed by Y Combinator, Mimir is the youngest graduate in this season’s batch. For Veluvolu, the founding of the company is specifically something that addressed his pain point: As a computer science student at Purdue University, the speed at which instructors provided feedback was frustrating. In all of his other courses, he said that it was automated and fast, but not in the computer science department — ironically, that one lagged behind.

Could Mimir be used for other academic programs? Perhaps, but right now the company is focusing on computer science. Veluvolu says that with such a high demand for engineers today, colleges and universities are struggling to teach them, so his company can be beneficial.

Students are charged $25 per semester to use Mimir, and Veluvolu tells VentureBeat that 2,000 students will be using it this fall. There are already 20 schools using it in the classrooms, with nine of them paying, including Case University, Pensacola University, Miami Dade University, the University of Louisiana, and the University of Michigan. The company hopes to sign a total of 50 schools by the end of the summer.

Right now, Mimir is only available to schools in the U.S., but extending its service to Canada is in the roadmap, Veluvolu confirmed. Other items for consideration include providing resources to an institution so it can start a new computer science program, as well as establishing a network among instructors to collaborate with one another. Lastly, Mimir has revealed it’s also speaking to non-academic institutions, specifically elearning tech startup Udemy and publisher McGraw-Hill, about a possible partnership.