[admsmz]

I am a customer of mathacademy.com, an intelligent tutoring system with a focus on math. Right now they are putting the finishing touches on their courses like abstract algebra and discrete mathematics. They already have linear algebra and calculus.

It absolutely works as advertised and I highly recommend it.

[SunghoYahng]

I took a look at the site you mentioned, but I don't see how it's useful for learning. It uses AI to determine what the learner's current level of knowledge is, but the way the learner learns seems completely typical. Then I may as well read classic textbooks. It doesn't seem to me to be that meaningful to determine the learner's current level of knowledge.

[admsmz]

Can you explain your objections? I don’t really understand this comment.

[lern_too_spel]

The benefit from 1-on-1 tutoring comes not just from finding what the student knows. There are any number of standardized tests that can determine that. Khan Academy does this for free and also adds lessons for mastery based learning.

The benefit comes from understanding how the student misunderstood a concept being taught to them and then fixing that misconception.

[travisjungroth]

I think this claim is too strong. I’ve given and received more 1:1 instruction than most, plus my share of group instruction.

The correcting misunderstanding is a big deal. Don’t get me wrong. The big downside is it’s very dependent on teacher ability.

I’d say the bigger factor, and luckily one that scales well, is teaching the right thing to the student at that moment. You either have unmet dependencies of knowledge, needless repetition, or the right thing. You could also call this fast, slow, just right.

There’s a huge variance of what people already know, even if they’ve been through the same classes. This means if you put a group of people together, the way to teach the most to a group is to teach at a crawl. You’re not teaching to the bottom of the class, you’re teaching to the bottom of the class at any given moment.

1:1 you can just fly in comparison because you can scale up and down the time per topic easily 10x for new material. If you include there may be review, it’s totally reasonable to think one person may need 1 minute (check) or 100 minutes (learn).

The thing about this is that the math is really against you at any number greater than 1. Even 2 is a step change (also for social reasons). So trying to get a smaller class isn’t nearly as effective as springing for 1:1. I mean, you could even say it’s 2 SD better.

[lern_too_spel]

> I’d say the bigger factor, and luckily one that scales well, is teaching the right thing to the student at that moment.

I agree that this is a bigger factor for most in the current environment. I'd argue that this is already a solved problem though with Khan Academy for free. The benefit from 1-on-1 tutoring beyond that has little to do with understanding what the student knows and teaching what's next because that problem is already solved to a degree that is almost indistinguishable from what a skilled tutor can provide. The benefit comes mainly from the tutor being able to figure out why the student answered a question wrong and directly addressing it, speeding up deep understanding.

[travisjungroth]

I disagree that teaching what’s next for the student is a solved problem. Usually the resolution is too coarse and the speed is barely variable at all.

[admsmz]

Everyone here is asking the right questions. How fine grained are the assessments? What is the tempo? Etc. However, I don’t see any objections that haven’t already been addressed.

This graph traversal based learning is obviously an idea whose time has come and we will probably see many similar companies spring up in the coming years.