Where did it all begin? An interview with Tassomai founder Murray Morrison

Tassomai founder, Murray Morrison, sat down with Andy Woods from Pearson’s View from the Lab podcast to discuss how he got to where he is today.

Where did it all begin?

Starting out by pursuing his favourite hobbies as a sportsman and professional jazz musician, Murray supplemented his income by teaching maths and science. After studying engineering for his undergraduate degree, Murray moved to London to study music as a postgraduate, where he practised rigorously for at least six hours a day. 

During this time, he realised that science and music were not so different after all - they both required practice and patience.

“It became obvious to me that the way that I could help these students best was not so much by teaching them the ins and outs of the content and equations, but really teaching them how to practise.”

Confidence is key

Another similarity he found between his musical studies and his scientific teaching was confidence. It’s something that students of all discipline and all levels struggle with:

"If you give students a means by which to practise daily, and do so in a way where they can feel the impact of their incremental gains, then they have the confidence to pick up that momentum themselves and run with it. The deliberate practice of the basics is where students, I believe, really find that confidence."

In 2012 Murray decided on a career change, taking the principles he has learnt as a professional musician and sportsman and using them to create Tassomai.

"It seemed to really work for me and my students and that's how I knew I was really on to something [...] It's always been a massive passion project for me. I really struggle with the concept of [tutoring], I think it is a worryingly unequal level of intervention. People who can afford it can get that level of advantage for their children that others can't access and I find that troubling.”

Tassomai started off as a set of flashcards but eventually this 'Robin Hood' approach was formalised and developed through software, giving a much larger reach. And so Tassomai was born! With the use of the product, students need less face to face tuition, as the basics are already being reinforced through daily quizzes, which saves time and money spent on expensive tutors.

The scientific approach

Tassomai started out focusing on science courses, but has since expanded into English literature and maths. Murray is determined to prove that science isn’t the big, scary subject that many students think it is; it’s the way that we approach the topics that matters. 

"We think of scientists, still, far too often as white men in white coats and not as being the cross-section of society that scientists are. Fundamentally we know that science is just the language of everything. We are all scientists and we all do science all the time in the way that we live our lives and move our bodies and engage with the world.”

By mastering the basics of any subject, from biology to poetry, students build their confidence and open themselves up to understanding more complicated topics. Multiple choice formats often come under fire for being overly simple and failing to test students on actual knowledge - it can become more of a memory test than a learning experience. However, Murray believes that:

"Good multiple choice questions that are well-written and living on a platform that knows how to deploy multiple choice can be extremely powerful."

EdTech and teaching

After starting up properly in 2012, it took until 2016 for Tassomai to take on its first member of staff and first school. Now, nearly 5 years later, the system has roughly 500 schools using Tassomai and around 200,000 students, who are collectively answering about a million questions a day.

With Tassomai being used in so many schools, Murray believes that teaching and EdTech go hand in hand:

"Rather than being something that competes with the teacher for that work of instructing the students, it's something that is empowering teachers, in the sense that it is giving them clear analysis of where more work is needed. It is saving teachers unfathomable amounts of time in setting and marking assignments, let alone the personalisation of all of it. [...] You get all of that time back that you can then put into individual interventions and really make a difference as a teacher.”

To hear the full interview on Pearson’s View from the Lab podcast click here, and to find out more about Tassomai please visit: www.tassomai.com/how-tassomai-works.