
Show HN: Find a Study Buddy for your MOOC - johnnyodonnell
https://stacks.courses/
======
elliekelly
This is awesome! Are you familiar with the plus/equals/minus learning concept?
Unfortunately I can't recall the exact term used when I first read about it
and google isn't helping. It basically says the most effective way to master a
subject is to have a:

"Plus" \- someone who knows more about the subject than you, has more
experience than you, can act as a mentor and resource for you and answer
questions.

"Equal" \- a study buddy at about the same level as you to work through
problems together and challenge each other to make sure you both understand
the material. This is the person you go to when you initially don't understand
something and you try to figure it out together. If you're both stumped after
you're spent some time with the issue that's when it's time to ask the "Plus."

"Minus" \- Someone who doesn't have as much experience or subject matter
knowledge as you do. You act as a mentor/resource for this person answering
questions and explaining concepts. This in turn helps to solidify your
understanding of the material.

I've long thought it would be beneficial to incorporate this concept into
online learning and your platform looks like it has all of the information to
make it happen. In addition to study buddy recommendations would you consider
adding the ability to pair people currently taking the class with people who
have completed the class who are willing to be a resource? I would guess the
"Equal" is the most important component and your system tackles that but there
might be significant value to users in adding the Plus/Minus as well.

~~~
johnnyodonnell
I have not heard of this concept, but I think that's a great model for
learning!

Our algorithm favors matches for people that are both currently taking a
course - so you are correct in that the "Equal" is the most important
component that our system tackles. However, it also does suggest matches for
people that are in different stages of the course. It might make a suggestion
for someone who is taking a course with someone who has completed it - and
vice versa.

In the future, I've thought about adding a Q&A component to the site. And I
think that would that could help with the "Plus/Minus" aspect of learning.

Maybe it might also be helpful to have a feature where you could ask to have
the algorithm favor "Plus/Minus" matches?

~~~
nerdponx
I almost feel like that's out of scope for your project. The "plus/minus"
dynamic plays out organically on places like IRC, Stackoverflow, etc. Whereas
finding an equal is somewhat harder.

~~~
johnnyodonnell
That might be true. I think it might be bordering out of scope for the "Find
Study Buddies" feature, but I've thought about potentially adding a Q&A
feature to the site in the future, which might be more in scope with the site
in general and also address the "Plus/Minus" component.

------
sischoel
That looks like a great thing to me. One thing that bothers me though is that
you have to hand over your full name and email address before you can even see
what functionality this website provides. I would prefer if there was some
kind of guest access or at least some screenshots of the interface.

~~~
johnnyodonnell
This is something I can work on. Screenshots are something I could easily add.
Would it help if I put some screenshots on the home page?

Guest access would be a bit hard, but definitely doable as well.

~~~
agracey
I think it's a really cool service to offer and I could see it really helping
a lot of people. Here's my thoughts on it.

The main webpage is possibly too minimal. While minimalism is nice, as it sits
currently, it gives the appearance of "not done yet". I would recommend adding
more explanation about what a user would expect, maybe some screenshots, user
reviews, etc.

It likely feels trivial as the creator but keep in mind that you know a lot
more about your service (and your vision) than your users do. The goal of your
landing page should be to bridge that gap. This all needs to be done without
adding any extra work for your users (including filling out forms).

Hopefully that helps a bit?

~~~
johnnyodonnell
That helps a lot. This is something that I haven't been keeping in mind. Great
suggestions for what to do with the landing page and also some of the best
advice for framing how I should think about how a user will see that first
page. Much appreciated!

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ccvannorman
Great work!

..I'm going to game the system a bit and ask this thread: Does anyone want to
atudy machine learning papers w/me (asynch) and discuss via voice call? Also
looking for project partners. Heavy preference for reinforcement learning and
computer vision.

<<\- even if this works I'll definitely be using your site to find buddies.
Thank you!

~~~
pretty_dumm_guy
Hi. I am currently taking David Silver's Reinforcement Learning and Deep
Reinforcement Learning Course from Berkeley. I would be very much interested
in joining you for reading research papers and possibly working on projects
too.

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passwordreset
Latest firefox, created account, logged in, went to '_build_ my profile',
received what looks like my profile screen, clicked on 'search' for courses, a
gray overlay is put in front of the window, then nothing happens. unfocus and
refocus window, gray is gone, but comes back when I hit 'search'. unfocus and
refocus, grey is gone, selected 'Interested', tried 'search', same gray
overlay. Same thing happens with 'search' from the 'Home' page. Result: cannot
'search', not usable in FF.

Same issue in FF incognito mode.

Same issue in Safari.

Same issue in Chrome.

How is this working for anyone?

Oh, wait a minute. The screen goes gray, but the search bar still works. Can I
add that this is a bizarre user experience? Had I not been convinced that
there might actually be something worthwhile behind this weird gray screen, I
would've left and never thought about this again. A simple message 'Use the
search bar above to search for courses to add to your profile' would have been
more effective for me.

I'm having trouble understanding how this would work. I've got a course in my
profile, pinged someone else who was interested, and now we're connected and I
can send messages to them and I assume vice-versa. Now what?

How does one 'study' with others over the internet? I'd love to see a 2-player
Anki or something like that, but that doesn't seem to be the purpose of this
site. This just connects people, which is great, but then... The usefulness of
the site seems to 'end' precisely where the work of studying begins. If I can
already find a 'study buddy' for some MOOC using the discussion boards on the
site, then what is this for?

and yeah, how does one _study_ with others using the internet? Maybe that's
the more pertinent question. If I knew the answer to that, maybe the other
questions would be obvious.

~~~
johnnyodonnell
The gray overlay is supposed to highlight the search bar. It's supposed to
make everything on the site gray except for the search bar. Is that not the
case for you? Is the search bar also graying out? If so, that's a bug I need
to fix. So far I haven't been able to reproduce it on my end, but doesn't mean
there isn't a bug.

Stacks isn't promising the ability to study over the Internet necessarily;
however, you could if you wanted. For example, you could ask questions via
chat. On the other hand, you could meet on Stacks and then move to Skype to
study. Or even more, you could potentially meet up in person if you have
gotten to know your buddy well enough.

Think of it like how you might think of Tinder. Tinder is called online
dating, but you wouldn't necessarily have a date on Tinder.

The feedback here is good! It is appreciated!

~~~
passwordreset
Thanks. The Tinder comparison is fairly clear, but there's still something
nagging at me. Tinder (I think) is partially based on physical location. I
suppose there's always "cyber", but that's kinda what I'm talking about.
"Cyber", well, cybersex is a very distant and unwanted second-place compared
to the real thing. I'm thinking there's something similar here. Studying with
someone else, it seems to me, has a strong physical component that requires a
face-to-face meeting. I don't remember adding location information to my
profile, so I guess your algo doesn't match location? It might be useful when
trying to create a study group.

Otherwise, for pair or group studying over the internet, I haven't been
satisfied with anything that I've seen. That adds some difficulty to the
social interactions once the connections are made, and anything that can be
done to ease the introductions would be helpful. For physical meetings, it
seems like the initial communication might be 'Hi, I'm so-and-so, if you're
interested, we can meet in the student library at 10:00AM', or something like
that. For Internet-based studying, I'm not sure how that interaction should
go. Something like 'Skype me @mynamehere at 10AM EST and we'll study together'
doesn't quite seem right to me, because IMing or IRC seems too cumbersome and
slow to be useful for studying. I think I'm just ignorant of the tools that
can be useful here, but what I've seen so far appears lacking to me.

Another thing, how do I actually find a list of my buddies? OK, I see them now
under 'Notifications'. That's unexpected. I was looking for 'My Buddies' or
something like that. I'm not sure what 'Notifications' would be for.

.. and the gray overlay does highlight the search bar, I just didn't
immediately notice it. My eye is on the 'Search' button that I just clicked,
and that gets covered by the overlay, so it gave me the feeling of 'WTF just
happened?'

I sometimes feel like a bit of a dick when I critique the work of others, so
I'm thankful that you're not taking this the wrong way. In fact, the only
reason why I'm looking at this at all is because I think you've done something
cool here, and it's potentially very useful. I think you're doing a good job
here, and I hope the best for your project.

~~~
passwordreset
Crap, one more thing I meant to add -- Stanford Lagunita
(lagunita.stanford.edu) has a number of interesting courses that you might be
interested in indexing.

~~~
johnnyodonnell
I will check that out! We are always looking at add new courses

------
kirill5pol
I know this is for MOOCS but there are lots of great courses that are
available online from universities where this would be useful. I'm taking Deep
Reinforcement Learning (CS294) from Berkeley. Adding the option for courses
like that would be really helpful!

~~~
johnnyodonnell
We're always looking for suggestions for new courses to add! I will take a
look at this and see what we can do!

If you want, you can email me a way to contact to you at admin@stacks.courses
and I can give you an update when we add this course!

------
crazygringo
Wonderful concept. From my experience in distance learning (online courses),
lack of human engagement is the #1 problem that leads to dropping a course --
no real human connection. Which is why many universities are investing in
using group videoconferencing to allow for genuine group activities in class,
every when people are in different towns/states. Anything to help MOOC's in a
similar way should be immensely valuable!

~~~
johnnyodonnell
I hope this can be a valuable a resource as well! Thanks for giving this a
look!

------
bfoks
I knew that I've seen somewhere[1] the icon from your landing.

[1] [https://getpolarized.io/](https://getpolarized.io/)

~~~
simplify
Not that surprising considering it's a free icon
[https://www.flaticon.com/free-
icon/bookshelf_167708](https://www.flaticon.com/free-icon/bookshelf_167708)

------
afarrell
You might also consider posting this to /r/cscareersquestions or
/r/learnprogramming on reddit.

~~~
johnnyodonnell
That's a good idea. I was planning on sending this out to r/learnprogramming
on Monday. I'll have to make sure this makes it to r/cscareerquestions as well

------
fromtogo
Really great idea! I just signed up and selected "Interested" for many courses
but I still don't have any study buddies. How many courses do I need to
select? Also, are you planning on maybe including an option to select a
subtopic to look for buddies for instead of simply by course?

~~~
johnnyodonnell
Our algorithm starts working as soon as you enable the "Find Study Buddies"
feature. Also, it starts working anytime you add a new course.

At the moment, it takes about 10 seconds to complete. So if you haven't gotten
any suggestions within 1-3 minutes, then there may not be anyone else looking
for a study buddy for those courses, _yet_.

I just launched this feature today, so the number of potential suggestions
will be as low as it will ever be. I plan on getting the word out on several
different sites, which will increase the number of potential suggestions.

We'll send you an email when you have new suggestions, so you don't need to
continuously check back in with the site.

Also, for which courses are you looking for a study buddy? I can make sure I
spread the word to people and communities who have similar interests.

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account99668877
Maybe I'm missing something, but why would you look for a study buddy on your
site and not in the MOOC discussion forum (because there you will easily find
people taking the same course obviously)?

~~~
johnnyodonnell
Very good question. I would recommend doing both I suppose. On Stacks, we
match you up with buddies based on all of the courses you are interested in
rather than just one. So our algorithm may recommend that you match up with
someone who is interested in Computer Science, Literature, and Psychology;
rather than just matching you up with someone in your Computer Science class.

------
maltalex
How about adding non-MOOCs for people to organize learning _subjects_
together?

Say I want to learn a new language or framework. It would be nice to be able
to find a group of people learning the same thing.

~~~
johnnyodonnell
I think this is a good idea. I've thought about doing something like this for
books as well. I haven't yet thought about doing this for programming
languages or frameworks, but maybe I should.

~~~
maltalex
Well, some of the courses will have large overlaps. You might have 5 different
courses teaching "intro to python".

Also, if a study group successfully finished an intro course, they might want
to take an advanced course together. Or do some non-MOOC advanced learning.

After all, people aren't taking courses in a vacuum. They're taking them as
part of a learning path. That path can include additional courses, exercises,
projects, and a lot more.

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aaronharnly
Congratulations Johnny! I enjoyed speaking with you earlier this year, and
think the adjustment to “find a study buddy” is a great move. I’m excited to
see you moving this forward.

~~~
johnnyodonnell
Thanks Aaron! I enjoyed speaking with you as well. Nice seeing you in the
comments!

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harias
Please add courses like CS109 (Harvard), CS231n (Stanford) etc. They are
pretty famous among the MOOC people as far as I know.

~~~
johnnyodonnell
Are they on Coursera or edX? Or are they on they're own platform?

\---

Ahh! Looks like are hosted own their own sites. I will take a look at adding
these. If you want, you can email me (admin@stacks.courses) a way to contact
you and I can give you an update when I have added these.

------
mactrey
Small quibble: the "... See More" link on course information pages is hard to
click on - seems that the clickable part of the link only has height of 1px.
Using Firefox 63.0.1 (64-bit)

~~~
johnnyodonnell
I will take a look at this. Thanks for the heads up!

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kakaorka
This is a fantastic idea. With some MOOCs, I tend to procrastinate heavily, so
I hope societal pressure from a study buddy would help me avoid that :)

~~~
johnnyodonnell
This is one of the primary reasons I built this! I hope you like it!

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thisisit
Any chances of adding Fast.ai courses?

~~~
johnnyodonnell
I'll take a look at this and see what we can do. If you email me at
admin@stacks.courses, I can make sure we reach out to you when/if we add
fast.ai

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Babycino
Great idea, hope you succeed!

~~~
johnnyodonnell
Thank you!

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niuzeta
Super fantastic idea!

~~~
johnnyodonnell
Thank you!

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diimdeep
Really cool. Almost there!

~~~
johnnyodonnell
Thanks for checking us out!

