

Classmill: Create online classes with links, images, videos and files - shreyakrishnan
http://classmill.com/?utm_source=hackernews

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biot
Good concept, but an unfortunate name. It reminds me of "diploma mill" or
"puppy mill"... which indiscriminately pump out things just to make money.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diploma_mill](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diploma_mill)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puppy_mill](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puppy_mill)

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tariqr
Gah. Well, lets hope for the best! :)

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djloche
I think the name is fine if you turn your product into a whitelabel solution.
People can dropin their own branding for their series of training courses and
then charge a fee - all without having to deal with servers or payment
providers. When I was freelancing a few years ago, more than a few people
wanted a modern solution that they could whitelabel and not have some other
company's branding on it.

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jlees
As someone who's putting a class together right now from a mix of existing and
custom content, I definitely think this is needed, though I don't think the
site does a great job of explaining quite what it is. I noodled around with
the "curated learning paths platform" idea myself, even :)

I found [https://www.mysliderule.com/](https://www.mysliderule.com/) a while
ago which seems to be the same kind of thing - might be worth checking out.

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tariqr
Hi jlees,

Thanks for the feedback. Definitely working on improving the messaging.
Mysliderule seems to be course catalogging of various MOOCs around the web.
Classmill lets you create the classes yourself.

Sending you an email, please do check! :)

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gingerlime
Looks really neat. I have lots of questions that I couldn't get answer on the
site though ...

* What's the business model? Are they charging teachers / students / schools?

* Does it allow people to charge money for the classes they build? Or all classes are meant to be free?

* Would be nice to have a demo / way to see how easy it is to build classes, e.g. add content, create quizzes etc before having to sign up.

Otherwise, looks very promising.

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tariqr
Hey gingerlime, thanks!

Its an MVP at the moment, eventually the goal is to have teacher curated
classes for very reasonable prices. At the moment its all free.

Will be having a quick demo up soon! :)

Cheers

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ams6110
You really need to get some of this basic info up there, I'm not going to sign
up for something with no idea of pricing or commitment required.

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tariqr
We're testing various homepages at the moment. The classes are free to make
and to join at the moment (with eventual pay to join coming down the road).

Thanks for the feedback!

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primitivesuave
First, great design! It's nice to see startups bringing good design to the ed
tech space, I remember how much I hated the design and UI of Blackboard
products when I was a student.

It would be nice to be able to check out class content without having to make
an account. I also missed the light red bar at the top that says "you need to
join the class", so I kept clicking on the button to open a section and
thought the link was broken and just snapping the page to the top of the
screen (as in when someone leaves <a href="."></a> as a placeholder)

Overall a very cool concept, and something teachers definitely need! Best of
luck with it!

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tariqr
thanks primitivesuave!

Great feedback. The first modules are previewable without joining. Will be
improving the notification views.

Cheers!

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jasondc
Looks interesting, can you talk about how this compares to the edx platform?
[https://github.com/edx/edx-platform](https://github.com/edx/edx-platform)

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tariqr
Sure. For starters, Classmill is not self hosted or restricted to universities
- anyone can create a class on Classmill.

Classmill also does not rely on content production or live streaming video
like edx. You can create classes with existing resources: links, youtube
videos, images, pdfs, ppts etc.

Strongly believe that for a vast majority of learning requirements, the
content is already out there. It just requires someone who knows the subject
(such as a teacher or expert) to curate the material and give students the
confidence in consuming them.

Hence Classmill was born :)

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vikp
You can actually create edX classes with existing resources. The xblock spec
is pretty flexible, and the existing blocks can be used with a lot of
different types of content.

There are also a ton of companies that host open edX instances, which let you
make your own courses. Several offer free trials -- here's a list:
[https://github.com/edx/edx-platform/wiki/List-of-Open-edX-
se...](https://github.com/edx/edx-platform/wiki/List-of-Open-edX-service-
providers) . There's a nice open source ecosystem forming. I know at one
point, edX was going to open edge.edx.org and let anyone make courses, but
don't know where that's at now.

Your platform has differentiators from edX, but these aren't necessarily them.

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tariqr
Thanks for that. By that I meant that a regular joe teacher is going to find
it technically difficult to use. You can run an instance of open edx on your
server, use xblock components and point them to a video/audio file and build a
course - but that just seems like a bit too much for a teacher who just wants
to assemble a bunch of content.

The best solution here will win or even coexist; all the different
approaches/platforms here will ultimately help the students win.

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vikp
Nice looking site! I worked on something similar a while ago, but it didn't
look nearly as good as this.

The problem I faced was in attracting users without one key compelling subject
area. Saying "this is a platform for every type of class" is awesome in
theory, but it's hard to find people who are just browsing around for random
classes.

I'd love to be able to browse at least one complete course without having to
login, also.

On a sidenote, livereload is still linked in your javascripts, and is hitting
localhost. You might also want to concatenate and minify the js.

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tariqr
Thanks vikp!

Yes - good point, I suspect we'll be forced into some sort of consolidation or
focus to sustain user acquisition. Letting the user browse more of the site
before signing up is something we're working on at the moment. Thanks for the
note on lr, plenty of (premature) optimization left to do :)

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MarcScott
I love what I see so far. My school has recently ditched our VLE, and this is
the type of thing I would recommend to non-tech staff as a replacement.

Do you have any plans for introducing tracking of student progress - maybe the
ability to submit files or multiple-choice quizzes?

Oh - and the name is fine. Educators and kids will be much more concerned with
content and usability - both of which you seem to have nailed.

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shreyakrishnan
Hi Marc, thanks for the kind words. Yes, currently you can track individual
students completion progress. Tests, quizzes and assignments are on their way.

Thanks for the feedback! If possible, please do write to us at
hello@classmill.com if you think we can help with making sure Classmill is
usable at your school.

Cheers :)

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lobo_tuerto
Loved the idea, and finally a place with good format where to vert some
knowledge in.

I really liked your design and UX overall, good job!

Update: Is there a place to set the module/class to "published" or something?
So it's not visible until you are done with editing and such (like a draft
mode).

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tariqr
Thanks lobo_tuerto! Appreciate the kind words.

Yes, draft mode is in the next deployment :)

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lobo_tuerto
I've been playing a bit with it, and found some rough edges, but maybe you are
already working on them. If interested in feedback you can reach me via email
(look at my profile for the address).

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butterfi
I must second the comment about the name. Most educators I know (and I know
many) would avoid anything that suggests their work is templated or rote, and
"classmill" kind of starts off on a bad foot with an educator audience. Seems
like a neat project though, best of luck!

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tariqr
Strangely none of the educators we've spoken to here in London had that
feedback. Will stick to the name and focus on building a great product for
now. Thanks for the feedback!

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bpesquet
A question for the site creator who seems to watch this thread : how would you
compare classmill to [https://usefedora.com](https://usefedora.com) ?

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tariqr
hey bpesquet, fedora focuses on creating classes where the teacher actually
produces the videos and content.

Classmill is attempting to help teachers who know where the right content is
with the right tools to deliver them to students - while tracking
effectiveness and progress.

Hope that answers your question, please feel free to dig deeper if not :)

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bpesquet
Thanks for your answer. As a teacher, I'll probably give classmill a try soon
:)

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cbhl
How does this differ from traditional LMSes, like eChalk or BlackBoard?

Is it e-rate eligible?

Can I integrate it with SSO things (Active Directory, Google for Education, or
Office 365)?

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tariqr
eChalk involves heavy technical content production and Chalkboard is a
dinosaur and intended for in classroom use.

Classmill is flexible in the content required for classes and its intended use
cases.

SSO is not supported at the moment, but is definitely in the pipeline.

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mathattack
I really like that high IQ people are out there disrupting education. There's
a lot of improvement that can be made. Keep it up!

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shreyakrishnan
thanks mathattack! :)

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srkiranraj
How is it different from gibbon.co ?

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thoughtpalette
Will there be an API to create courses?

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tariqr
Yes, absolutely. In the pipeline! :)

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sanderjd
I think even more important would be APIs to embed the classes elsewhere.

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tariqr
Great idea, thanks!

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mgmeyers
Simple, yet effective. Well done!

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tariqr
Many thanks, mgmeyers! :)

