The Education Problem: Raj Reddy (Part 8)

In the next segment, we discuss how Raj’s model could be applied on a global scale. When thought of in these terms, it could become a revolutionary methodolgy and change the concept of education throughout the world.

SM: So Raj let me explore a different thread with you. Kind of like an evolution; let’s assume the basic methodology we are working with is this learning by doing methodology which is mentored rather than lecture taught. How about an online implementation of this? If you are trying to scale this globally, you have the call center in India with students all over the world. That model is starting to happen. There is an online tutoring industry that is starting to come together using Indian tutors. RR: Basically in this particular case, most tutors would not be suited to teach this stuff unless they have been through this program.

Right now we are trying to get with physical mentors present in the class. As we speak we are actually experimenting with a small number of distance mentors who have also been through the same program. Basically there is a work being done at Stanford by Jim Gibbons on online tutored video. They discovered that tutored video is better than conventional lectures. So we said if that is the case, let us see if we can use the same idea here.

SM: What is a tutored video? RR: Basically they used to do this satellite broadcasting of lectures, and people listened to them and went to sleep. Then they recorded them and had a local person who could stop the video. If there are five people taking the course in at Hewlett Packard, because they are all busy with work they can only take this course at 5PM, and the lecture is only given at 10AM.

So they said that this solved two problems. They video tape the lecture and it is there and the other thing is they are supposed to be able to ask questions which nobody used to ask anyways because it was a big class and they did not want to stop the whole class. So five people at one location get together and they would find somebody who just took the course last year and he would act as a mentor for these five.

All he would do is show the video tape, not learning by doing. The only difference was any time somebody had a question about the lecture they could raise their hand and he would stop the video tape and answer the question. If five minutes go by and nobody raises their hand he is supposed to stop the video tape anyways and asks “what is he talking about?”, and force a discussion among the students about what the lecturer is saying. The net result was that these students did better than those who took the course face to face in the class. Amazingly.

Then they did a study after another 10-15 years called Tutored Video Distance Mentoring, with some support from Sun Microsystems, where they said, “let us assume the tutor is not here physically, because you may not be able to find one”, and they still had the same effect. They had a distance mentor far away, maybe 10 miles away, and they did the same experiment and they found the results where almost 95% as good as having someone there. If you want to read about this experiment all you have to do is go to Google and type ‘tutored video Jim Gibbons’. You will find out about the experiment and everything.

It came out about seven or eight years ago, and what they says to me is anything I can do without a physical mentor locally I can also do it with globally distributed mentors. The only thing I have to do is train them because what I am trying to do is much different than conventional education. Let’s say I am an algebra tutor in India, and a student here needs help with a particular problem in a particular book I need to know two things; first, what book the student has and, second, what the problem is. The tutor just needs something like a Skype connection so he can talk the student through the problem.

[To Be Continued]

[Part 7]

[Part 6]

[Part 5]

[Part 4]

[Part 3]

[Part 2]

[Part 1]

This segment is part 8 in the series : The Education Problem: Raj Reddy
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