[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 :)

[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... . 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.

[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.

[gravity13]

Surely you've heard of Versal?

I'm looking forward to seeing what Classmill can do! I've been personally thinking about these sorts of things too.

Do you have any plans for adding assessable items and making things more adaptive, or do you guys think you'll be more focused on static content materials?

[tariqr]

Versal seems like a very good product, but also seems to be focusing on content authoring quite a bit. Classmill is a lot more focused on content curation.

Yes, adaptive/dynamic blocks are definitely in the pipeline as we improve the product!

Cheers!

[gravity13]

Awesome! Great to hear.

I used to work at versal and now work for another obscure edtech startup - built another 'authoring tool' but our "blocks" are more like <elements> and we've got about 50 or so of them powering a poorly created k7 math course. These elements are inlinable in text and nestable.

It makes authoring a bit more technical, but we contracted our authors out, so with a bit of training, they were able to handle the markup-like input and not before long, one or two of them were asking me for features I had only wished somebody would ask for (the others just thought of it as a job to get done).

It's been my personal philosophy that tools like these ought sacrifice simplicity for power, as it should grant whatever zany ideas authors can come up with. Don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting this necessarily to you, just sharing my experiences and personal goals - and perhaps a slight suggestion to listen to your most ambitious users.

I'm a bit entrenched in this.