What is the development of tutor-web ? I don't see anything in the site ? Would you offer courses or would you hire teachers to present courses ?
The tutor-web primary site is at
http://tutor-web.net where you can find several courses, both material and drills. This is the most recent, mobile web version of the tutor-web (see also
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1406.5004.pdf). There are a few more courses available (you can see them at old.tutor-web.net) but they have not been ported into the mobile web version yet.
A course consists of one or more tutorials, which again consist of lectures. The lectures can contain slides, examples, more detail or handouts - and, most importantly, drills. The content is developed by a
content provider who is usually also a teacher. Other teachers are then free to use the material, either in a class-room or simply point their students at a given lecture, telling them to take drills as a remedial measure or as a further study. The students will get a grade inside the system and the instructor may or may not want to use that same grade as a partial grade in a real-world course. Of course any student can use this anywhere - the system is completely open. The
only requirement is that students agree that we can use their data for research.
In recent years software development has been done mostly by hired programmers (when we have grant money), but we have also had a few volunteers.
Material is usually generated either by volunteer instructors or we have hired students to write multiple-choice drill questions (when we have grant-money).
We have been experimenting with student-generated information: The student gets credit (or SMLY) for submitting material which then gets peer-reviewed by other students (who get credit for the review). In the longer term the hope is that this may give content generation a boost, and make it more sustainable. At the moment student-generated material is only new questions, but will be extended to worked examples, links to outside information (e.g. Khan Academy to name just one) etc.
We will also allow registration of tutors within the system, but that is still on the ToDo list.
