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Something I've been wondering for a while: are you considering opening up physical bootcamps as well?

choxi 11y ago
We don't have any plans to, a well designed online program can be better than an offline program. It has different challenges, but also some unique strengths, i.e. - We can scale 1-on-1 instructor to student ratios. Tech allows us to handle the logistics of tracking and coordinating students so that our instructors can work with each of their students individually and on their own pace. - Everything is quantitive by default. We have a robust set of analytics about our students individually, as cohorts, by instructor, by course, etc. We're only now getting to the volume of students where you can see trends in the data, but it's exciting to see how we can improve the program based on what we see. - The curriculum is higher quality. We use the flipped classroom model popularized by Sal Kahn: instead of listening to your teacher lecture for an hour and going off on your own to do homework, you watch video lectures on your own and spend time with your instructor working on problems. It's a smart way to use tech to automate lectures and allow instructors to do what human beings are best at: working with individuals and helping them work through their blockers and misconceptions. We've essentially started a video production team within Bloc to record videos and screencasts for our curriculum, our curriculum started out pretty terrible when I first wrote it four years ago but today it's the highest quality material I've seen online. I do think there should be an in-person component to Bloc, but we don't want it to be a strict requirement for the courses. We're starting to organize meetups and events in the cities with our largest student concentrations so they can meet each other and attend Bloc events but it would be supplementary to the courses for students who can't or don't want to attend but still want to learn.

choxi 11y ago

We don't have any plans to, a well designed online program can be better than an offline program. It has different challenges, but also some unique strengths, i.e. - We can scale 1-on-1 instructor to student ratios. Tech allows us to handle the logistics of tracking and coordinating students so that our instructors can work with each of their students individually and on their own pace. - Everything is quantitive by default. We have a robust set of analytics about our students individually, as cohorts, by instructor, by course, etc. We're only now getting to the volume of students where you can see trends in the data, but it's exciting to see how we can improve the program based on what we see. - The curriculum is higher quality. We use the flipped classroom model popularized by Sal Kahn: instead of listening to your teacher lecture for an hour and going off on your own to do homework, you watch video lectures on your own and spend time with your instructor working on problems. It's a smart way to use tech to automate lectures and allow instructors to do what human beings are best at: working with individuals and helping them work through their blockers and misconceptions. We've essentially started a video production team within Bloc to record videos and screencasts for our curriculum, our curriculum started out pretty terrible when I first wrote it four years ago but today it's the highest quality material I've seen online. I do think there should be an in-person component to Bloc, but we don't want it to be a strict requirement for the courses. We're starting to organize meetups and events in the cities with our largest student concentrations so they can meet each other and attend Bloc events but it would be supplementary to the courses for students who can't or don't want to attend but still want to learn.