

LearningJar- Learn Skills Informally - americandesi333
http://www.learningjar.com/index.html
I would love to get feedback on my education technology startup from the HN community. Its helping people gain employable skills informally and prove what they have learned.
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wheelerwj
I am pretty excited about the possiblity of this. One thing that concerns me
though, is that I am in no way interested in tying my facebook to anything I
do professionally or really even personally. I hate that contraption and
although I might be more convinced to link to my google plus, i really don't
want much social media involved with my professional development. So i checked
it out but didn't subscribe.

Would gladly give you my email though.

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americandesi333
We are working on alternate authentication. Would love to get your email
address. You can send it to ritu@learningjar.com

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eykanal
At first glance, the site seems to be nothing more than an aggregator of
tutorials. If there's a differentiating factor, I'm not seeing it.

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americandesi333
Thanks for your feedback! We are helping people figure out the skills they
need for a new role, connecting them to disparate content via our partnerships
and then in the backend integrating with those content providers to track your
informal learning in one place so you can use it to apply for jobs.

Will definitely try to get that across better with our landing page.

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Terhorst
"We are helping people figure out the skills they need for a new role,
connecting them to disparate content via our partnerships and then in the
backend integrating with those content providers to track your informal
learning in one place so you can use it to apply for jobs."

Hmm, I think that means...

"We are helping people train for a new role..."

"We are helping people train for a new role with high-quality tutorials..."

"We are helping people train for a new role with high-quality tutorials and
tracking their learning so they can use it to apply for jobs."

Ohhhhh, in other words... You help people train for a new job and give them
something to put on their resume? Awesome! Why didn't you just say so? =)

I suppose people are more likely to say, "Oh.. oh. Hmm. Sounds impressive," if
you say it the other way, though.

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americandesi333
Haha. yes! I think we should just say that straight up.

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p_apps
Another site with facebook login required, no thanks. Why not openid, or other
authentication options?

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americandesi333
We are working on adding other authentication options as we have heard that
feedback :) The reason we started with Login with Facebook is because it makes
it easy on users. They dont have to upload picture and fill out more forms for
LearningJar.

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russelluresti
The idea of pulling existing video or interactive learning resources into one
location is interesting, but there are definite improvements needed.

First, people looking to learn things often do not know what is required of
them, that's why they're learning. Taking a play from the Khan Academy or
Treehouse playbook, offering a suggested order that the user should complete
the videos in (from most basic to most advanced) eases the learning process.
Otherwise, they won't know exactly where to start.

The other issue is with content curation. Aggregating learning resources from
different places adds the problem of an inconsistent instruction style,
teaching method, and process. For example, different design resources may
teach different design principles. Different development resources may teach
different ways of solving a process. To advanced users, knowing multiple ways
of doing something, or even alternate/conflicting methods or approaches isn't
a bad thing--they can use their existing knowledge to decide which is the best
in which situation. But for someone new, being presented with
alternate/conflicting approaches will just confuse them.

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americandesi333
Great insights and feedback. Thank you.

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frugalfirbolg
I found the About page very useful for understanding the use case. I recommend
putting the search feature that's on the About page on your home page as well.

Also, why is the ability to Add a role on the home page in the list of example
roles? Perhaps if it was called Request it would make more sense.

The Browse section is for individual skills versus roles. It seems that having
it centered on Roles makes more sense. At least have the option to browse
Roles without following them.

Finally, I found a link to Vimeo for Product Launch Promotion wherein the
Learning Jar panel initially appears but then disappears: "How to Earn
Customers Without P..." <http://vimeo.com/39473593>

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americandesi333
Thanks for your inputs! We fixed the bug and so you should see the LearningJar
panel on the side.

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engtech
I need to have some demo of what is going to happen on a site before I use
facebook connect or give you any login information in any way.

Requiring a logged in user to use the site should not be the first step.

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americandesi333
You can go through the website and learn without logging in at the moment. But
if you would like to 'Follow' any new roles, we are requiring people to login
for that. Having a demo is a great way to summarize the value we bring in.
Thanks!

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jdeseno
That's a pretty striking lack of diversity in the call to action on the main
page. ^C^P^P.

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americandesi333
We actually want to and looking to add more people! LearningJar is started by
two women and we strongly believe in diversity.

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jdeseno
The call out is "what I want to be" and of the 3 choices I'm given, all 3 are
white male 25-30 something techies.

I can't understand why you'd want to advertise that so blatantly. I'd
recommend something less abstract, like a useful explanation of what your site
does etc.

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americandesi333
The idea is to inspire people by showing how you can gain skills informally.
Individuals featured on the front were either college dropouts and/or achieved
their goals via informal education.

We will be adding quotes from them, videos with them and also will be
highlighting others in the industry that have achieved their dreams by
constantly learning.

Its not an ad play, but instead a way to just inspire. After all, we all seek
mentors and get inspired by great stories.

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iamkovacs
A refreshing new player in the education and skill-development field. I'm
definitely keeping and eye on this one and it's my first stop for new skills I
want to improve.

