Expert online tutors for the delivery of Data Science postgraduate programmes

One of the UK’s well-known universities for being a key player in world-leading research activity approached Curio to help them overcome the staff shortages they faced when delivering their master’s programmes in Data Science and AI.

Delivering the resource to scale 

The university saw a rapid increase in student enrolments in both their Data Science and Artificial Intelligence postgraduate courses in September 2021. In response, they approached Curio with the question; “how do we overcome staff shortages and continue to provide excellent learning experiences to our exceptionally high number of students?”.

As a solution, by widening the pool of academics to include Curio Faculty facilitators, they could split the teaching tasks over multiple staff as part of a coordinated, hybrid team. The Curio facilitators facilitate online discussion boards, mark assessments, and respond to any student queries, while the university academics deliver live lectures, seminars and practical workshops. 

Maintaining quality

The university partnered with Curio Faculty to provide a group of qualified online facilitators with relevant PhDs and the required theoretical and industry knowledge to deliver high-quality course facilitation and support. After an effective recruitment campaign, The Faculty team sourced, contracted and onboarded the perfect candidates for the courses in one month. Facilitator provision was highly flexible to enable the university to increase and decrease facilitator support as necessary throughout the contract based according to varying student numbers per module and as programmes demanded.  

With Curio Faculty facilitators, the university is able to focus on providing quality online and face-to-face teaching, without falling behind on marking assessments and facilitating online activities. The university is now looking to increase enrolments next semester, without compromising quality contact hours, due to the additional teaching resource available.