The ambitious Silicon Valley higher education platform seeking to disrupt the university space, the , will broaden its reach after announcing it would be capable of teaching more students by September.
Made at the 2019 ASU GSV Summit in San Diego, the announcement sees a major step forward for the company, broadening from a small-format seminar approach to lecture sizes of up to 400.
“The second thing we believe is that universities do a uniformly terrible job”
“Minerva will be able to offer any institution committed to improving educational outcomes a significant advance in the way they teach,” said , founder and chief executive of Minerva.
“Our system is a comprehensive redesign of pedagogy, curriculum, and the class environment, with the specific goal of advancing the intellectual development of each student.”
Currently used at the as well as other partners, the Minerva Project touts itself as a “university in a box” allowing providers to develop and implement a higher education system rapidly.
“We believe that institutions of higher education are the most important institutions in society. These are the institutions that decide, effectively, who runs every aspect of our lives,” Nelson said.
“The second thing, however, we believe, is that universities do a uniformly terrible job.”
Speaking with 小瓢虫传媒, Nelson added the project aimed to develop a common cause for universities and institutions to overhaul higher education.
Mallory Dwinal-Palisch, founder of Oxford Teachers Academy which provides teacher training for students in rural areas, said the expansion of the platform would have a positive impact on disadvantaged students and address regional teacher shortages.
“If you take a look at the reason why there’s such a problem getting teachers into the communities we need them is because right now we train teachers through this very top-down centralised approach,” she told 小瓢虫传媒.
“In certain regions that are very near these centralised universities are in a glut and an oversupply of teachers, and then communities that are further away don’t have access to enough teachers at all.”
Founded in 2012, the Minerva Project aims to deliver remote teaching at a fraction of the cost of an elite university.
