About Fjordbyte
Transforming education through intelligent assessment and feedback
Fjordbyte was born from a simple yet powerful observation: academic assessment and feedback processes were consuming valuable time that could be better spent on actual learning and teaching. What started as a personal challenge for one professor has evolved into a comprehensive solution that's reshaping how educational institutions approach student evaluation.
OUR STORY
The idea for Fjordbyte emerged in August 2023 when Professor Olav Tenstad, responsible for over 200 students at the Institute of Biomedicine at the Faculty of Medicine, found himself overwhelmed by grading and providing exam justifications. During a week when floods kept him at his cabin, he had time to reflect on how this process could be streamlined while simultaneously providing students with more meaningful, learning-enhancing feedback.
From that cabin office, Professor Tenstad began developing a Python script with the help of artificial intelligence. Recognizing the potential, he reached out to Christian Bru, an experienced developer of AI-based platforms from Tietoevery, who immediately saw the opportunity to free up time for activities that truly promote learning.
Just four months later, their system was ready for testing. The response was overwhelmingly positive – students loved receiving detailed feedback on their short-answer assignments, something they rarely experienced before.
Read more about our story here: Posts
FROM CONCEPT TO COMPANY
The success of our initial pilot led to significant recognition and funding, enabling us to create a production-worthy prototype at the University of Bergen. This support enabled us to transform from a university project into a standalone company with ambitious goals.
WHAT MAKES US DIFFERENT
Our innovation lies in building upon the educational infrastructure that institutions already know and trust. Rather than replacing existing systems, we're developing seamless integrations with established standards like LTI (Learning Tools Interoperability) and connecting with the platforms educators and students use daily. This means our AI-powered assessment tools enhance rather than disrupt familiar workflows.
We take a collaborative approach to innovation, working directly with learning institutions as true development partners. Through joint innovation projects, we co-create the next generation of learning tools together with our customers, ensuring that our solutions address real educational challenges while respecting the pedagogical expertise of educators. This partnership model allows us to build more effective, contextually relevant tools that truly serve the academic community.
EVIDENCE-BASED INNOVATION
Our approach is grounded in rigorous scientific research and validation. We've conducted comprehensive studies demonstrating that our AI system performs at least as well as human graders, with correlation coefficients as high as 0.904 between AI and faculty assessments. Notably, our system shows stronger correlation with faculty grading than traditional student-to-faculty comparisons (R² = 0.64).
Our research has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including studies on student perspectives in pharmacology education that validate both the technical effectiveness and student acceptance of AI-supported formative assessment. Students consistently report that our feedback helps them understand how to improve, with the majority finding our AI-generated responses aligned with traditional grading guidelines while providing additional value beyond standard assessment methods.
Student perspectives on AI-supported formative assessment in pharmacology
REAL-WORLD IMPACT
Our approach is grounded in rigorous scientific research and validation. We've conducted comprehensive studies demonstrating that our AI system performs at least as well as human graders, with correlation coefficients as high as 0.904 between AI and faculty assessments. Notably, our system shows stronger correlation with faculty grading than traditional student-to-faculty comparisons (R² = 0.64).
Our research has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including studies on student perspectives in pharmacology education that validate both the technical effectiveness and student acceptance of AI-supported formative assessment. Students consistently report that our feedback helps them understand how to improve, with the majority finding our AI-generated responses aligned with traditional grading guidelines while providing additional value beyond standard assessment methods.
OUR MISSION
We're addressing one of academia's biggest time drains while simultaneously improving the learning experience for students. By automating routine assessment tasks and providing rich, personalized feedback, we free up educators to focus on what matters most: actual teaching and meaningful student interaction.
The potential impact extends far beyond individual institutions. With language models that can be adapted to any educational context globally, we're positioned to scale our solution internationally, making quality assessment and feedback accessible to educational institutions worldwide.
LOOKING FORWARD
We're in a race against time and competition, but we're confident in our approach. Today's students are resourceful and capable of finding their own solutions, which means we must consistently prove our value by delivering superior results that benefit the entire educational community.
Our immediate commitment includes providing decision support for half of the medical semesters at the University of Bergen – a significant undertaking that demonstrates our dedication to practical, measurable impact in education.
At Fjordbyte, we believe that better assessment leads to better learning. We're here to make that belief a reality.
OUR TEAM
Fjordbyte is built on complementary expertise across four essential pillars:
Technical Leadership: Our technology foundation is led by experienced developers with extensive backgrounds in AI-based platforms and enterprise solutions, including work with major international clients.
Financial Strategy: Our financial expertise comes from seasoned professionals with deep knowledge of business development and investor relations, bringing structure and strategic planning to our growth trajectory.
Sales & Business Development: Our commercial success is driven by experienced professionals in national and international sales, ensuring we can effectively communicate our value proposition to diverse markets.
Research & Development: Our academic foundation remains strong with continued focus on research-driven innovation and deep understanding of educational challenges and opportunities.
