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2. Gamify learning core subjects: specially maths and physics to start. 3. Allow the community to make lessons and have voting systems for quality. As someone

by itmag 15y ago

2. Gamify learning core subjects: specially maths and physics to start. 3. Allow the community to make lessons and have voting systems for quality. As someone who is itching to start an e-learning startup, what would be some ways to implement this? For the user-created lessons, maybe have an IDE-like enviroment with a domain-specific "programming language" that enables non-coders to easily create educational modules and upload them. Think SCUMM but for the e-learning domain. Thoughts, anyone?

japhyr 15y ago
I think this hasn't been done well because it is more difficult than creating something like wikipedia. One of the reasons wpedia works is because you can enforce a non-redundancy policy. There can only be one article on any one topic. In education, however, there are many ways to teach any one concept. So you have to allow people to create different lessons on the same topic, but also create a simple pathway through all these lessons. Khan academy has been successful in this for math, but I think a good part of that is because there is one person clearly running the show, an intensely productive man who spits out several videos a day, for years. Crowdsourcing that work is an interesting challenge. As a teacher, I'd love to see this done well. But it seems most people who go into these ventures either don't get education, or don't get technology. It seems there is a pretty small group of people in the world who really get both fields. It's also hard to put together a team of people who get both. And finally, the profit motive kills a lot of education endeavors. Education is fundamentally a human right, and profit motives tend to exaggerate the achievement gap. There is plenty of room for new thinking in this area.
allisonmobley 15y ago
Interested in a cofounder? I have an idea for how to do this, drop me a line at transtartup.blogspot.com
jfarmer 15y ago
Khan Academy is doing a lot of this. They actually work with schools, too.
lubujackson 15y ago
As someone who's done a lot of work in e-learning, the biggest problem is making something for subjects that anyone would bother using. It's a lot of energy to go learn physics so who wants to try it in some half-finished, inconsistent, unverified e-course. Programming is easy to teach because it's all conceptual, and the concepts are clearly defined and structured. So you could maybe teach linguistics in this way, but not something like Spanish. Or if you tried to have a collaborative Spanish curriculum it would be a huge effort to collate everything into a logical progression ("they don't know that grammar rule/word yet") so you might as well pay someone to write a consistent one from scratch. Same for physics/math/any open-ended science or humanities class. Your second big problem is getting anyone to actually contribute a lesson plan in a way that is consistent with the format you're trying to structure things. People aren't going to make one from scratch for you, for free. So you either pay people or accept all manner of half-baked, duplicate lesson plans.

by itmag 15y ago

japhyr 15y ago

I think this hasn't been done well because it is more difficult than creating something like wikipedia. One of the reasons wpedia works is because you can enforce a non-redundancy policy. There can only be one article on any one topic. In education, however, there are many ways to teach any one concept. So you have to allow people to create different lessons on the same topic, but also create a simple pathway through all these lessons. Khan academy has been successful in this for math, but I think a good part of that is because there is one person clearly running the show, an intensely productive man who spits out several videos a day, for years. Crowdsourcing that work is an interesting challenge. As a teacher, I'd love to see this done well. But it seems most people who go into these ventures either don't get education, or don't get technology. It seems there is a pretty small group of people in the world who really get both fields. It's also hard to put together a team of people who get both. And finally, the profit motive kills a lot of education endeavors. Education is fundamentally a human right, and profit motives tend to exaggerate the achievement gap. There is plenty of room for new thinking in this area.

allisonmobley 15y ago

Interested in a cofounder? I have an idea for how to do this, drop me a line at transtartup.blogspot.com

jfarmer 15y ago

Khan Academy is doing a lot of this. They actually work with schools, too.

lubujackson 15y ago

As someone who's done a lot of work in e-learning, the biggest problem is making something for subjects that anyone would bother using. It's a lot of energy to go learn physics so who wants to try it in some half-finished, inconsistent, unverified e-course. Programming is easy to teach because it's all conceptual, and the concepts are clearly defined and structured. So you could maybe teach linguistics in this way, but not something like Spanish. Or if you tried to have a collaborative Spanish curriculum it would be a huge effort to collate everything into a logical progression ("they don't know that grammar rule/word yet") so you might as well pay someone to write a consistent one from scratch. Same for physics/math/any open-ended science or humanities class. Your second big problem is getting anyone to actually contribute a lesson plan in a way that is consistent with the format you're trying to structure things. People aren't going to make one from scratch for you, for free. So you either pay people or accept all manner of half-baked, duplicate lesson plans.