How can established tuition chains stay ahead in a competitive education market while delivering personalised learning at scale? For Xueda Education, one of Malaysia’s largest and most trusted tuition institutions, the answer lies in digital transformation. By partnering with HeyHi, Xueda has successfully elevated its hybrid learning approach, enhancing educational outcomes for thousands of students across the country.
Read how Xueda Education redefined its teaching methodology by adopting HeyHi’s powerful AI-driven solutions, demonstrating that scale and personalisation can go hand-in-hand when powered by the right educational technology.
Founded in 2007 and approved by Malaysia’s Ministry of Education, Xueda Education has grown into one of the nation’s most prominent tuition networks. With 12 physical centres spanning key regions including Kuala Lumpur, Selangor, Johor, and Negeri Sembilan, the brand serves over 6,000 students from primary to secondary levels every year. Their comprehensive academic offerings span all subjects within the national curriculum, delivered through both in-person and online modes.
Xueda’s reputation for academic excellence is supported by a team of 149 teachers and a unique educational model that blends classroom rigour with personalised mentorship. From elite academic streaming based on diagnostic entry tests to a proprietary rewards system that keeps learners engaged, Xueda’s commitment to student success is unwavering.
However, as Malaysia’s education landscape evolved, particularly with the advent of digital learning during and after the pandemic, Xueda recognised the need to invest in next-generation technologies. Their vision? To integrate AI seamlessly into their curriculum and operations, creating a scalable, intelligent, and localised education solution for 21st-century learners.
Despite Xueda’s track record, scaling personalised, bilingual education across thousands of students and multiple centres posed significant challenges.
The first was ensuring consistent quality and learner outcomes across branches. Each student has unique needs, learning styles, and academic levels, which require tailored feedback and differentiated instruction. Traditional manual grading processes, especially for open-ended responses in languages such as Malay and English, were labour-intensive and often delayed feedback loops. Additionally, evaluating essays required even more time from teachers, limiting their ability to provide in-depth, individualised feedback.
Secondly, Xueda sought to accommodate both the national Malaysian MOE curriculum and their own internally designed curriculum frameworks. This dual-curriculum model demanded a flexible, content-agnostic platform capable of adapting to various pedagogical requirements.
Lastly, language posed a critical challenge. With a substantial proportion of students and parents being Chinese-speaking, there was a strong need for a user interface (UI) that could support Chinese localisation, ensuring usability and comfort for non-native English speakers.
In addressing these concerns, Xueda didn’t just want an LMS (Learning Management System); they wanted an intelligent, bilingual, AI-powered assessment and personalised learning system that would actively enhance teaching and learning.
Recognising the transformative potential of HeyHi’s technology, Xueda fully adopted the platform across its academic operations, rebranding the system as “Xueda AI.” This strategic move positioned HeyHi not merely as a back-end support system but as a front-facing symbol of Xueda’s commitment to innovation.
At the heart of this transformation is HeyHi’s AI Marking system, designed to evaluate open-ended questions using the proprietary Point Allocation System (PAS). Unlike conventional automarking engines, HeyHi’s PAS framework embraces the complexity of student responses. It breaks down answers into key components and allocates marks accordingly, supporting partial credit and flexible, rubric-aligned evaluation. Teachers can guide HeyHi’s AI using topic- or subject-specific rubrics, ensuring fair and consistent marking tailored to their unique standards. This level of teacher-AI collaboration is unmatched, most other systems offer fixed or generic criteria. It’s a core feature that sets HeyHi apart, empowering educators with precision control while leveraging AI efficiency.
This capability extends beyond short answers to full compositions. HeyHi’s AI composition marking system applies custom rubrics to essays and long-form writing. It also includes a powerful “first level checking” engine that automatically flags grammar, vocabulary, and word usage issues, offering corrective suggestions directly on the student’s writing. This enables teachers to focus on higher-order feedback, like idea development and structure, while saving valuable time.
For Xueda, the multilingual capabilities of HeyHi’s AI marking engine were a game-changer. The system’s ability to mark open-ended responses in both Malay and English allowed Xueda to uphold its bilingual instructional model efficiently. Furthermore, the platform’s compatibility with Malaysia’s MOE syllabus, as well as Xueda’s proprietary curriculum, meant that teachers could design assessments with full autonomy and precision.
To support its wide-reaching student demographic, HeyHi also offered a fully localised user interface in Chinese. This thoughtful adaptation not only increased adoption among parents and administrative staff but also empowered students more familiar with Chinese to engage with the digital platform confidently.
The impact was immediate and significant. Teachers reduced time spent on marking, freeing them to focus on lesson planning and individualised support. Students received timely, constructive feedback that improved their understanding and engagement. With AI highlighting learning gaps and providing personalised learning paths, each student progressed at their own pace, with greater confidence and clarity. From a business perspective, the digital transformation reinforced Xueda’s brand as a forward-thinking institution, one that uses technology not just for innovation, but to meaningfully improve outcomes.
Encouraged by the success of AI-enhanced assessments, Xueda is now expanding its use of HeyHi to include the platform’s AI Speech Evaluation module. This feature allows students to practise spoken English and receive immediate feedback on pronunciation, fluency, rhythm, and more, based on school-defined rubrics.
Given Malaysia’s multilingual education environment, this module is an ideal complement to classroom instruction, helping students build oral proficiency in a self-paced, data-informed manner. Whether preparing for oral exams or simply improving day-to-day communication, the AI Speech Evaluation tool is poised to become a cornerstone of Xueda’s blended learning strategy.
- AI Marking for Open-Ended Questions with PAS: HeyHi’s Point Allocation System enables automated grading of open-ended responses with granular, criteria-based scoring. The system also supports essay marking with rubrics and offers first-level checking for grammar, vocabulary, and word usage.
- AI Composition Marking: Students receive structured feedback aligned to rubrics, covering grammar, coherence, and content. The system evaluates both language accuracy and higher-order writing skills like structure and idea flow.
- Multilingual AI Capability: HeyHi supports English and Malay content, ensuring alignment with national curricula and bilingual instruction.
- Curriculum Flexibility: Whether adhering to MOE standards or custom-designed syllabi, HeyHi accommodates varied curriculum models effortlessly.
- Chinese-Language UI: A fully localised interface makes the platform more accessible to Chinese-speaking educators, students, and parents.
- AI Speech Evaluation: Students can receive immediate feedback on their spoken English, enhancing language acquisition through intelligent, rubric-driven evaluations.
The partnership between HeyHi and Xueda Education exemplifies how traditional tuition centres can evolve into tech-enabled, data-driven education leaders without sacrificing personalisation or cultural relevance. By integrating HeyHi’s intelligent assessment tools, Xueda has successfully enhanced learning outcomes, streamlined operations, and positioned itself at the forefront of Malaysia’s education sector.
Through the launch of Xueda AI, the tuition chain has redefined what it means to deliver quality education at scale, offering each student a personalised path to academic success, powered by technology that understands both content and context.
As Xueda continues to expand its use of HeyHi’s tools, including new AI-driven language modules and advanced analytics, its story stands as a compelling case study in educational innovation. Schools and tuition centres across Southeast Asia and beyond can look to Xueda’s journey as proof that meaningful digital transformation is not only possible, it’s essential for thriving in the modern learning landscape.
Xueda Education’s transformation into an AI-enhanced tuition powerhouse through its partnership with HeyHi is a testament to what’s possible when educational vision meets technological innovation. With a strong foundation of pedagogical excellence and a strategic embrace of AI-powered tools, Xueda is setting a new benchmark for education providers in Malaysia and beyond.
Whether it’s through the advanced PAS-based AI marking engine, bilingual content support, or speech evaluation tools, HeyHi empowers educators to focus on what matters most: guiding each student towards their highest potential. As Xueda continues to scale its impact, its use of HeyHi stands as a blueprint for education in the digital age, where intelligent systems and human insight work hand in hand to shape the learners of tomorrow.
Explore how HeyHi can elevate your educational approach and empower your students with outstanding results. Discover more about Xueda here or learn more about the impact of HeyHi tailored solutions here.
