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Ask HN: Review my new learning website: Crunch Course

7 points by imp ↗ HN
I've created a website to help people who want to take advantage of the free educational content already online (like OCW).

You can join a class or create a new one. Each class has publicly viewable homework submissions with comments so you can give and receive feedback.

The site is brand new so there isn't much content on it yet, but I'm starting an SICP class here: http://www.crunchcourse.com/class/structure-and-interpretation-of-comp/2010/jan/

Your feedback on the concept and on the website are appreciated. Thanks in advance!

http://www.crunchcourse.com/

11 comments

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wgj
Anything "Crunch____" for a website might put you in a trademark dispute. Or it might not.
czcar
One of the first things I would think about is charging.

I am sure there is a definition for it - but the act of paying some money - whether it is incentivised by returning a percentage of the money dependent on commitment/progress etc, or is taken as a running cost, has the effect of increasing dedication/loyalty and filtering out the people who like the idea of learning it but aren't willing to actually learn (or so i hypothesize...)

If you haven't - have a look at Clayton Christensen's "Disrupting Class", "The Online Learning Idea Book" - Patti Shank and "New Designs for Early Education" - by IDEO (its aimed at early childhood but some of the ideas revolving around increasing user involvement are really interesting). They delve into some extremely interesting ideas, not all relevant but theres some gold in them.

And I have not done nearly enough research into it, but I believe an understanding of Game Mechanics and how effective Social Interactions work on web would probably paramount to the effectiveness of this web app (theres a tonne of this info out there - think zynga/gowalla for learning).

Just my 2cents

imp
Thanks. Charging is something I'm considering adding at some point. Maybe I'll do that sooner rather than later. I haven't read either of those books yet. Thanks for the suggestions.
wisty
I was planning on doing something similar (but go waylaid). Have you considered Amazon affiliate links?
imp
Yeah, I'm considering affiliate links. I think there could be a good connection there. Once traffic picks up I'll probably add them in some form.
roundsquare
Neat idea. I've been meaning to learn economics, maybe I'll use this.
roundsquare
One thought I just thought about. You say you should "self grade" your homework. It makes sense, but this means someone needs an answer key.

What if I decide to use a textbook to structure my class. E.g. each week we go through a chapter and do the exercises. We may not have the answers. Is there any way to add some "social" grading? I realize this may be tough with trick/tough questions in textbooks, but still, I think requiring an answer key will make this tough.

imp
That's a really good idea. Social grading would be useful in that case. There's no support for that right now, but it could be added in the future. There is a way to comment on individual homework assignments, so that could make due for now. I'm wondering if people would want to grade anonymously or have the grades be public.