Robotutor marks the homework of a class of thousands in online classroom

TENS of thousands of students across the world will log in to online classrooms this week. A large portion of them will be learning to write code in computer science courses. The scale and reach of massive open online courses (MOOCs) is growing year on year, and many argue they have the potential to vastly improve access to education. But size is also their biggest weakness: a human teacher can't guide, correct and give feedback to legions of students all working simultaneously.

To address this problem, researchers at Stanford University in California have built an artificially intelligent tutor for online students that can break down and assess submitted code. Called Codewebs, the software can give every student fast, tailored feedback and guidance, something that would be difficult for a human teacher even in a traditional classroom.

From New Scientist