[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.

[johnnyodonnell]

That's true, it doesn't match location at the moment, but we may add something like that in the future if that's what people want.

Hopefully as more people sign up, our algorithm will be able to make better study buddy suggestions. Although this isn't a guarantee and is somewhat part of the experiment in launching this site. If our algorithm can't make quality suggestions, then we may have to rethink our strategy.

Studying online is intentionally meant to cover a very broad spectrum of possibilities. It could mean meeting up in person or online to study. It could mean asking and answering questions from time to time in the chat. It could also mean just staying up-to-date with what courses your buddies are taking to help each other stay motivated.

Your list of buddies will show up in notifications, but your full list of buddies will show up on your profile under the Following/Followers section.

You shouldn't feel like a dick lol. All of these concerns and suggestions have been awesome! And they are things that are great for me to be thinking about! I very much appreciate you checking out the 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