By Terry Hébert, Pharmacology & Therapeutics
Finally something (someone) who can teach thousands of students at a time. I give you… Robotutor!
Is this where our flirtation with MOOCs will lead? What are we trying to achieve with MOOCs anyway? That has never been made clear to me. I could imagine MOOCs as a way to prepare students FOR university but I still have grave concerns about what they mean for the future of universities if we remove the real interactions between professors and students and we stop pushing both to be their best.
TENS of thousands of students across the world will log in to online classrooms this week. A large portion of them will be learning to write code in computer science courses. The scale and reach of massive open online courses (MOOCs) is growing year on year, and many argue they have the potential to vastly improve access to education. But size is also their biggest weakness: a human teacher can’t guide, correct and give feedback to legions of students all working simultaneously.
Read the full article from NewScientist: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22029444.400-robotutor-marks-the-homework-of-a-class-of-thousands.html
I m a professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics at McGill University.
