Innovative uses of computers and online technologies are transforming education at all levels.  Matching the right technologies with experienced teachers uses everyone’s time more efficiently to provide a deeper and better learning experience. One of Atlanta’s newest start-ups, a company called Office Hours, has recently been founded by Jeff Levy, an experienced entrepreneur and investor who has founded, built and managed a number of successful technology-based start-ups over the past 17 years.  Office Hours is designed to solve one of the most important problems with MOOCs (large online classes) by providing 24-7 tutoring in an online collaborative environment.  It allows students world-wide to collaborate with one another and/or with a Teaching Assistant via video, voice, live chat, shared browser and whiteboard.  Office Hours will recruit, train and certify the tutors who will serve the MOOC courses that often enroll 10,000 or more students. 

Jeff is partnering with Prof. Christine Ries from the School of Economics to run a test of this start-up service in her campus course The Global Economy.  This course is an introductory economics course that moves more rapidly and includes more material than traditional principles of economics classes.  The course is a requirement for students in Georgia Tech’s International Plan program and emphasizes the application of economics to current events in the global economic environment.  Providing additional support with the ‘fundamentals’ of economics will allow Prof. Ries to emphasize the ‘coaching’ role that is currently emphasized in educational reform programs. The Office Hours test partnership will expose students to a ‘start-up in progress’ and will allow them to move quickly, even within an introductory course, into interesting and important applications of economic analysis.