Yesterday I had the delight to talk to Duane Sider, Director of Learning at Rosetta Stone for my first interview of this blog. I want to offer a series of interviews with the “grown up” companies in the online education sector in the coming months to share their point of view and ideas of the industry with you.
Hence the new Educational Grown Ups interview series is complementing my interview series on EDUKWEST where I only cover educational start ups.
In this interview we focused on the new Rosetta Stone TOTALe product that combines the classic Rosetta Stone course with two new environments, the Rosetta Studio and the Rosetta World.
Duane gave a detailed overview about the dynamic immersion and methodology behind Rosetta Stone. He explained Rosetta Stone’s philosophy of not integrating technology just for technology’s sake followed by a detailed description of the Rosetta Course, Studio and World.
At the end of the interview we talked about the use of Rosetta Stone in the classic classroom and the future of the teacher / tutor in our changing world and how he might transform into a guide.
It was a very insightful interview and I came up with three key factors to understand Rosetta Stone’s approach.
One important thing about Rosetta Stone is that it concentrates on students who are serious about language learning. It is not about having a community for social interaction in Rosetta World, it is about learning a language as targeted and focused as possible.
TOTALe consists of three “evolutionary” steps for the learner starting with the asynchronous Rosetta Course as basis, going to the safe and guided synchronous Rosetta Studio and ending in a “on your own” experience in the Rosetta World.
Rosetta Stone tries to recreate the most effective way to learn a language which is of course in learning in a foreign coutry with native speakers by using technology that helps the student to achieve the personal goal as fast and as seamless as possible.
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