[zachgalant]

I'm making www.codehs.com which is one of the sites featured in the video (the one with the dog). It would be awesome to get some feedback on what people think of it if you get a chance to try it out.

We're focusing on making it really fun and accessible to learn to make really cool programs really quickly while learning the fundamentals and getting a strong programming foundation.

One of the keys to our site is that tutors look at and give feedback on all the code thats's submitted by students, so if you're interested in helping kids out, it would be awesome if you wanted to help tutor.

We're currently testing out and building lots more tutor features, so your feedback and ideas would be greatly appreciated. Go to http://codehs.com/tutors/ to sign up if that interests you at all.

[itistoday2]

I see you guys are charging students a monthly fee for "unlimited help" from the tutors, but I can't find any info on your site about how much the tutors will be making from that income stream for the value they're providing to your site and the students. Can you elaborate?

[zachgalant]

Yeah, we're still working on exactly how tutors get paid. For now, it's still in beta, so we're just asking for volunteers and getting feedback and figuring out a fair way to pay people.

One thing we are planning to do (in addition to just paying cash) is to give students credits to continue learning and getting help from tutors when they help students who are further behind than they are. That way, students can help each other.

[eru]

That's a neat idea. Just please be aware of the danger of extrinsic motivation crowding out intrinsic motivation. People help each other on the internet all the time without any reward apart from doing The Right Thing.

Giving credits for getting more advanced help sounds like a good idea, though.

[zachgalant]

Thanks! yeah, we're hoping that professional software developers will help out just to feel good and help people. The extrinsic motivation is more for the students who can either learn more by helping others or make some money as a high schooler working flexible hours from anywhere.

[itistoday2]

To be honest I really don't see much value add from these online teaching centers. All that's needed is the desire to learn to code, once someone has that, I think it's pretty easy to get the help and info you need (for free) already.

[zachgalant]

you'd be shocked at how many ways people who don't code can get stuck when trying to learn.

Many times, they can't even form their question any better than "My code is broken. What do I do?"

Having someone human there both gives them the answer much better than they can find themselves and gives them the knowledge that someone is there to help them, so they don't give up.

Yes, some people will be able to figure things out themselves, but having someone to help the rest of the people can be invaluable.

I've taught intro CS for three years at Stanford, and even there, most students get stuck and need help to get through the intro class. The reason they have been able to (the intro CS class is the most popular class at the school. About 90% of all students take it) is that there is an extensive support network of student TAs that are there to help them.

We're replicating this online for all the "normal" kids who can't just "figure it out" themselves without any direction.

[eru]

> Having someone human there both gives them the answer much better than they can find themselves and gives them the knowledge that someone is there to help them, so they don't give up.

Yes. Even if the human doesn't actually give you the direct solution to your problem, but just reassures you that you are on the right path and with a bit more thinkingn you will overcome the current obstacle. (Or points out to you when you are blatantly wrong.)

Having confidence that there is a solution is often half the battle to finding one.

[gizmo686]

It isn't. I taught my self how to code, and have a 100 field array class for ints to prove it. (Literally, public int a1, a2, a3, ...)

Don't underestimate the utility of a teacher.

[eru]

I am mostly self-taught, but I benefitted massively from having some programming friends when I was in my initial stages of learning.

Later I had been on the other side, too, having acted as a mentor for some learners. There is value added in connecting people. Just instilling the right values, and culture, and giving people pointer to the right resources. (E.g. friends don't let friends start off with PHP.)

[ivansavz]

Could you tell us more about your business model? Because I don't like this very much: http://codehs.com/pricing

What do you think about the Khan Academy CS stuff?

It is a tricky business you are in, but could work out very well if you can harness the power of community. You should focus on this idea "give students credits when they help students who are further behind than they are".

I would suggest a slight change in the term "credits" to distance yourself from the money=knowledge associations. Think more "pay it forward" economy where you earn points by helping others. Seeding the economy with a bunch of paid Tutors could get the economy started. Tutors will just earn "help points" in the system like all other students but they will sell them to you.

To get an exchange economy going you will probably need to move away from the crippleware approach(http://codehs.com/pricing). You should offer the real service (answering questions when you are stuck), and after users use up their free points ask them to help others.

[zachgalant]

Yeah, we are definitely planning to switch to more of that system for a pricing model, and we are not happy with our current pricing. It was kind of an MVP for pricing to get something up there that is fairly reasonable as we're getting going. Thanks for the ideas!

In terms of the Khan CS stuff, I think their editor is really really cool. They have a lot of cool real time features and number scrubbers and color pickers. I think it's just a very different approach to teaching than we have, where theirs is very much based on tinkering, which I, personally, don't think is as good. Definitely a really cool tool though. We've gotten a lot of ideas from it for how to improve our editor.

[aroberge]

I looked at the video; did not register for it. I've been working for a while at a very similar idea (basically porting rur-ple, another Karel clone which I wrote 8 years ago, to the web) ... but I intend for it to be free. Kudos for you to want to create a business out of it, but my aim is simply altruistic.