An AI tutoring platform that builds a course and teaches it one-on-one

Situation

Organizations that already have their teaching material in documents still have to turn it into a course by hand. Video courses give every student the same material, and a human tutor costs more and is available only at scheduled hours.

Solution

The platform has three parts.

• A course builder with two starting points. An AI interviewer asks about the topic, goals, time available and depth, and then builds the course. Alternatively, the creator uploads documents and the course is built from them, with their diagrams extracted for the creator to choose from.
• A one-on-one AI tutor. The tutor teaches one unit at a time, asks a practice question after each explanation, scores the answer and tracks what the student has mastered.
• Branded sites. Each organization receives its own address, logo, colors, course catalog and instructions for the tutor. A course can be free, purchased once or included in a plan.

Design decisions

Jeff Hunt set fixed rules to decide what to teach or review next from the mastery scores, so that part works the same way every time. In a course built from documents, each unit carries its source passage, so the tutor teaches from the organization's own material.

Students tended to take about twice as long as planned, so courses are built to about half the intended length. A casual mode also lets students skip units. A review of course transcripts led to two rules for the tutor: keep praise in proportion, and never declare mastery a student has not shown.

Outcome

An organization can turn its existing teaching material into a course and offer each student one-on-one tutoring on its own branded site. Each student's progress is tracked unit by unit, and the tutor returns to material the student has not yet mastered.