Just launched www.madrassa.co Where I try to tackle the 90% dropout rate that online courses experience, by reducing the 10,15,30+ hours of course material to 1,2,3 minutes total. Using the native language of the web (GIF) to teach Code & Design skills.
What courses would you want to see on madrassa?
Tnx! The point of GIF is to not need plugins, or pause videos etc. GIF is not super efficiently used in this beta version though. Need to improve that.
This is a truly interesting concept. By shortening the learning time like this, things seem a lot more doable, particularly on the first levels. I think one of the things that make it so hard for people not to drop out is the fact that just starting seems like this insurmountable task. I wonder how this would work on more complex levels, though. Great job, in any case!
I'd love to see a flappy bird-like game being developed.
Great idea. One small comment: Some of the text needs some work, e.g. for the free lesson on prototype two of the required materials are listed as "A4 paper" (would a letter-sized paper not do, is the specific size important? Better say "a sheet of paper that's larger than ...") and "some pencils" (some sounds strange here because pencil is a count noun).
Other than those, when I clicked on the next arrow on the first screen I was presented with a screen with problems (Chrome 38.0 on Mavericks): the text "2/20" was sitting on top of the instruction text and the window displayed nothing. Why not detect the user device and put a help message indicating that the site has to be used on a mobile device? When you say "You'll only need an iOS or Android device" in the course description I thought (mistakenly) that these will be required in addition to my laptop.
Interesting. I like the implication that content runtime is a cost not a benefit of courses. And the content is accessible as text and forward-skippable nicely. As someone who avoids youtube unless it's the only source of information on a subject, this is great.
Not entirely sure about calling it "madrassa", though.
"madrassa" is simply arabic for "school"; i really like the name because for me the word brings the ancient arab scholarly traditions to mind. also it is a nicely inclusive touch to use the word despite the somewhat unfortunate connotations it has taken on in the west.
Youtube is (unfortunately) for me most of the times the go-to place for learning something. Hopefully that can change. And yes... the project's codename can/might/will definitely change. tnx for the feedback
1. It's a bit hard for me to tell when the GIF starts or loops, specially when I try to read the text below it. Perhaps there could be some small delay at the end, or a progress indicator?
2. Could you possibly make the next/previous arrows regular links (with return false or whatever is used to prevent it from reloading the page)?
I'm in a setup where using the mouse is awkward, and I can't reach that arrow using only the keyboard.
1. Didn't think of that before. Makes sense
2. Agreed. Also will probably help with spreading the loading times etc. Need to work on the UI of the courses a bit
Doesn't the name have seriously negative connotations... at least in English-language media. Until I looked it up right now, I didn't know that is a positive word in Arabic. I have always seen in portrayed negatively and associated with Islamic fundamentalism.
yeah it simply means 'School'. But tnx to mainstream media, it might have some negative taste to it unfortunately. Will have to see if I keep the name or change it.
tnx! will absolutely do. Trying to get the concept right before really pushing it hard. I wish I had something like this for myself back in school. I might have not gotten kicked out after they bored me to death.
