A London-based teaching platform has closed a £4.75 million investment round.
Founded in 2013, Matr delivers live one-to-one tuition sessions and is now collaborating with University College London, one of its investors, to use AI for the development of automated tutor training.
The university plans to develop a qualification, powered by analytics from Mart’s platform, to establish a global standard in online teaching.
“Matr has the potential, in collaboration with UCL, to set the standard for online teaching and achieve traction in global tutoring markets,” said David Grimm, manager of the UCL Technology Fund at Albion Capital.
Working with Rose Luckin, professor of Learner Centred Design at UCL and an expert in AI in education, Matr is using its database of over 500,000 recordings of online teaching sessions to develop AI software to automate the training and development of a global community of online teachers.
“What we are very interested in is using the right blend of human and artificial intelligence in the online classroom to identify the sweet spot where AI can augment the abilities of an online human teacher,” said Luckin.
Tom Hooper, founder and CEO, Matr, added: “For the last four years we’ve worked really hard to demonstrate our global ambitions, delivering hundreds of thousands of hours of teaching from our global teaching community to tens of thousands of children.
“By partnering with new investors, and some of the world’s leading Learning Scientists at UCL, we are well positioned to accelerate our vision of creating a global community of online teachers and students, making effective one-to-one learning accessible to all.”