Epigeum is a spin-out company from Imperial College London. Co-founder David Lefevre sent me this piece about mass online tutoring systems. He wrote it partly prompted by hearing a talk - "one of the most impressive presentations I have seen in our field" - by Daphne Koller (co-founder of Coursera), on 2 July at the University of London Computer Centre.
Lefevre is not making a new point, but he gets to the heart of the matter, in this snippet:
Human tutors are present but the delivery system allows them to operate largely at a meta level and therefore teach many more students than is possible via more traditional methods. ..... As anyone who has taken a course on these systems will attest, the learning experience does not feel impersonal. The effect is a rich, engaging experience far removed from the solitary browsing experience provided by OpenCourseWare.
(I wonder if the MOTS acronym will stick?)
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