[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.)