

Ask HN: What would an ideal online learning platform look like?  - glen

Imagine you have limitless money and can create an ideal online learning site. What would it look like? How would it work? What features/tools (e.g., grade book, discussion posts, wiki).) would it include? How might it disrupt our current educational model?<p>Think about any online learning experiences that you have had. Common experiences may include: reading comments on HN, editing posts on Wikipedia, watching educational videos, or taking online classes using a learning management system like Blackboard. What features have stood out to you as particularly helpful? Why?<p>We at www.nixty.com are working on building our own ideal learning platform. I’m reading Jarvis’ What Would Google Do? And figured I’d post the question to HN. As always, thanks for making this a great community and for helping us think through things.
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bokonist
My high school had amazing math textbooks. The books had been written by the
faculty over the course of many years. Each page consisted of 10-12 word
problems and nothing else. There would be no explanation, no section
introductions, nothing but problems.

The problems were designed to be just hard enough that you could solve them by
making a little bit of a leap from your previous knowledge. After solving a
series of leading questions, you would make one last leap, solve a problem,
and the book would tell you: "Congratulations, you have just derived the Law
of Cosines!"

Because the difficulty was set just right - not too hard, not too easy - doing
math homework was like playing a game of Sudoku. ( well, the difficulty was
right for me, students who had less aptitude for math tended to hate the
books). Also, because you learned by figuring out things as you went, the
knowledge stuck the first time. No tedious drills or memorization were ever
required.

If I was to design the perfect online education system, it would be like those
books. No reading and memorization, just problems designed to be in the sweet
spot between boring and frustrating. Online you have the big advantage that
you can dynamically adjust the difficult level of the problems. This would
actually solve the major problem with the textbooks.

The textbooks are all online here:
<http://www.exeter.edu/academics/84_9408.aspx>

If I was creating an online learning site, I would try and license the
material from them. Then I would put the problems online, make the difficulty
dynamic, add hints and helpers for tough problems, etc.

~~~
Dilpil
Wow, looking at the website, this looks like an amazing school.

~~~
lsb
Yes, it's one of the best private schools in the nation.

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neilk
Books. Even in the USA, classrooms are starved of just _books_. Not to mention
the third world.

Okay, if it has to be some gee-whiz techno-thingy, then a Kindle which is
about as cheap as an iPod shuffle. Which reads aloud and can automatically
adjust to your reading level, suggesting new books as you go.

I think we need to look at some new economic models for teaching. Maybe a
school could simply garnish 5% of every dollar a student makes above, say, 75%
of the median wage, for 10 years. That gives the school some guaranteed income
and the incentive to teach students economically useful skills, quickly.

Also, new reasons to learn and new ways to learn.

The main problem with educational software today is that the administration
buys it and it serves their purposes, not the students'. This is an exactly
analogous situation with corporate IT software buying. Except it's even worse
because the administration is a quasi-branch of the government.

Out with the state curriculum and the bureaucrats. In with selling education
to the people being educated. Education _for its own sake_. If that means we
develop a course in rap lyrics, we'll give you rap lyrics. But we'll also
discuss the history of martial poetry too, from the Greeks onwards. We're also
going to discuss rhetoric, the mathematics of periodicity, rhythm, and the
Nyquist theorem of sampling. If you want to learn how to read the Bible
better, we'll do that too, and that way we can bring in practically everything
in English literature after the King James Version.

Graduating from a grade should be like getting a belt in martial arts.
Something you do at your own pace and a test you take at your own initiative
(with parental prompting too). The difference between slow students and fast
students is usually something like 33-50%. So if someone needs two years to
master algebra, let them TAKE two years. It's not a race for fuck's sake.

Education should be interwoven with doing actually useful things. I think pg
is right on the money that kids are mainly disconnected from society because
we go to great lengths to disconnect them. Drug dealers know that at least
some 14-year-olds can be trusted with limited responsibilities; so would it
really be so terrible to have kids doing some jobs in a more positive working
environment?

Let's put education in unusual places, with the people who need it and are
motivated to learn. Undocumented workers are where I would start. We already
know these people are ambitious, hardworking, and habituated to risk.

~~~
jskopek
Your approach to teaching a curriculum that is custom tailored to an
individual's goals is one of those things that makes so much sense in
retrospect, but at the same time an approach I have never seen discussed.

Here we have this vast repository of most the world's knowledge, all indexable
and cross-referencable, and for the first time in history we have the chance
to deliver content in a highly personalized way. All we're missing is that
last 10% - a way to aggregate and properly present that data.

~~~
neilk
I suspect that last 10% will be as easy as writing the last 10% of a software
project.

Personally, I don't see any software solution here. It's going to have to be
teaching by teachers, just organized differently. I'd be happy to be wrong.

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tokenadult
Perhaps you should contact me off-forum for the long answer. As president of a
statewide parent organization for the families of gifted children, I've had
occasion to read reviews of, write reviews of, and recommend a great variety
of online learning experiences for parents who want to go beyond what is
offered by their local school system. My oldest son is an alumnus of distance
learning courses from the Center for Talent Development (affiliated with
Northwestern University, and I think a Blackboard client), Johns Hopkins
University Center for Talented Youth, and Stanford's Education Program for
Gifted Youth (EPGY). He is now enrolled in the EPGY Online High School

<http://epgy.stanford.edu/ohs/>

which has been rolling out implementation of eCollege and PowerSchool for
various aspects of school communication to students and parents.

Two very crucial things that the part of the market I know still has to get
right is

a) building student online communities in a way that encourages emotional and
social growth of the students,

and

b) adaptive placement in courses so that able learners can reach a high
challenge level and master lots of new materials. Most online courses are too
easy and too dumbed-down for the learners I know best.

See my profile for how to reach me for follow-up.

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vaksel
It needs to be free. An online "college" is a joke in the eyes of the world,
so you shouldn't even try to compete in that segment by trying to charge
money.

You should instead focus on teaching people the subjects. Think of it as a
secondary tool that students could use to learn the material on their own. I'd
focus mainly on problems, I think thats the only way you actually learn
anything but doing examples.

You also should make it competitive, have different rankings and achievements
etc that the students can strive for. i.e. Algebra Level I, Level II, etc.
Each level would have a different set of questions, that get harder and
harder.

Then let users challenge each other i.e glen vs mike - Algebra III. The users
would compete to finish the 10 questions, and the winner would be either the
person who got the most answers right, or if its a tie, the person with the
fastest answers. Give different point values for tests based on how hard they
are.

Then help users further, by letting users offer tutoring services. And to
compare, the users would be able to see profiles, and see what type of
achievements the "tutor" achieved.

But this is mostly just brain storming off the top of my head

~~~
glen
Vaksel, I like what you are saying here. So, for example, let's say I've got a
course in Algebra Level I. I can then create a test in which they pass at 80%
and gain proficiency at 90%.80% = basic knowledge; 90% = proficiency; 98% =
mastery. Their level could then show up on their profile. Is that accurate? If
not through a test, then how would you assess the knowledge level?

Also, would you embed these tests/levels in courses or would you make them
separate? I guess you could do both. One person could work through the course
if they wanted a more comprehensive understanding and another person could
simply test-out of it by passing the test.

~~~
vaksel
Yeah, pretty much I think a course should be doing a set number of problems,
working through each step, and explaining what each step does.

I'd probably let them start out with the final, and use that as an evaluation.
If they achieve the 80% give them the option to move on to Algebra II or to go
through the walkthrough to brush up on their skills and retake the test.

Use that first final to find what the user will have problems with, and adjust
the walkthrough based on where the user has problems.

This way the person can blaze through the easy stuff like Algebra and Geometry

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toisanji
Since as long as I can remember, my work and fun has been programming
languages and learning foreign languages. Recently, I am building my ideal
language learning site. So its pretty focused on tools for learning foreign
languages which I think is fairly different from being a general learning
platform. I think that really the fastest way to learn a language is live in
the area that speaks that language, but everyone can't do that, so I'm trying
to build a community where people can practice reading,writing,speaking, and
listening in the langauge they are targeting. It is a work in progress and
still not where I want it to be in terms of features. You can check it out at
<http://sanbit.com> . I used Blackboard a bit during college, but I don't even
really know what it does. Whatever you build, I think to create value, it
should help both teachers and students save time, when I used blackboard a few
years ago, it seemed for of a hassle rather than actually help me, but maybe
we weren't using it to its fullest potential.

~~~
glen
Toisanji, nice work! I like the layout of the home site. Tells you what it is
and how to use it. You are using a lot of different techniques to promote
language learning. Have you found any that are more effective than others?

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buugs
Blackboard is awful I have one class that is based almost entirely in it and
that class is one of the most annoying because of the website. First it is
separated into 20 sections on the side, most of which I do not even use.
Another issue if I'm using linux with all the prerequesites I fail the browser
check and it tells me to try Firefox3... which I'm using because of the lack
of support for other operating systems I almost missed an assignment as it did
not attach my document.

Another Issue that really bothers me is the grades, you cannot sort them in
any way there is no relative dating just however the teacher enters it in and
most don't really care how they enter it, at the very least I'd like to be
able to see my total points or perhaps even a comparison between my grade and
the average grade, something all my other classes give is averages of large
assignments/tests.

The main thing I would like would be something like a simple editor as default
and a html editor that actually accepts html code such as bold and paragraphs.

An interface that didn't use massive amounts of javascript to fetch each page
would be awesome too but that might be asking a lot.

Id like sections that aren't in use such as calendar or announcements or data
kind of things to be unavailable if the teacher has not posted anything in
them.

Another good thing would be a way for teachers to change .doc into pages too
many times have I seen bullets and numbered lists just copy pasted into a
document to lose all formatting.

Thats a lot of what I hate but probably hard to do and not feasable.

~~~
glen
Buugs, thanks for the review of BB. Yeah, it definitely has some major
limitations. I'm with you on the ability to convert documents into Web pages.
I think that'd be a great addition.

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sjs382
I've had online classes that were (essentially) normal classes, just online.
Classes were set for a specific time, Lectures, notes, files were broadcast
and shared via Adobe's Breeze software (its name changed.. can't remember what
to). Classes were still held on campus, but I was unable to make most of the
classes. It was one of my better online learning experiences.

I guess this example is better thought of as a web-enhanced course rather than
fully online,though.

------
jgilliam
<http://www.google.com/>

