

Show HN: CourseNest – Online Weekly Discussion for MOOCs - neilsharma
http://www.coursenest.com/

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brianstorms
Kudos for highlighting one of the problems with MOOCs, which by definition
sever the priceless face-to-face connection between a student and a teacher,
and then exacerbate the problem by scaling into an N-thousand-to-one student-
teacher ratio. But CourseNest (good luck keeping that name, you only have to
worry about the Google legal team beast waking up (they own Nest)) is unlikely
to make a difference, in my view. Too many middlemen, too many businesses
chasing after the conversation that should be held in a physical classroom or
lab or, worst case, in office hours.

This is not an economically sustainable education platform. This is a chat
room. It's a feature, not a business.

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droithomme
$25 per single class discussion, and I see on the pricing page it's actually
not really per discussion, but is priced per entire class of N-discussions,
with around 1 discussion section per week. How long are these discussion
sections? Is it an hour say?

The "first two are free" claim seems to be deceptive advertising as it
actually seems to be that the price is $25 * (N-2). That's a pricing formula
and not really free discussions since one pays the full price to "get" them.
In general, I forever avoid companies that make deceptive and misleading
claims since the fact that they make them means they have unethical
management, which is not something that is ever correctable.

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neilsharma
Thanks for the feedback.

The discussions are once a week, and are about an hour (just like most college
discussions).

The total, one-time price is $25 * (N-2). It is not pay as you go nor a
subscription. You can cancel anytime before the third discussion happens for a
full refund as stated on the course's page. Apologies that it is unclear.

The thesis behind the pricing is for stable planning. Material needs to be
prepared in advance every week. Instructors need to be found and trained.
Having a variable, unpredictable budget each and every week would hurt the
quality of education.

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notduncansmith
This looks really cool. I've run into this exact problem with MOOCs in the
past. That pricing seems kind of expensive, and it looks like they only offer
2 courses right now, but I'd love to see it grow as a platform.

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neilsharma
Thanks! The pricing is still being tested and is cheaper than most community
college courses. However, the goal is to build an economically sustainable
education platform, which most MOOCs struggle to achieve.

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craigching
It's interesting, there is a poll on the Coursera page asking about interest
in 1-on-1 tutoring sessions. This sort of sounds like that, sounds like
Coursera might be looking into this already?

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dhawalhs
Coursera is experimenting with Google Helpouts for their Machine Learning
course. We did a blog post on that:

[http://www.blog.class-central.com/coursera-peer-to-peer-
tuto...](http://www.blog.class-central.com/coursera-peer-to-peer-tutoring-
google-helpouts/)

~~~
neilsharma
That's really interesting. What percent of students are willing to pay for
tutoring if free ones are available, and do you actively try to identify
potential candidates based on class performance?

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dhawalhs
We means Class Central, not Coursera. Sorry for the confusion.

