Question

Hi, I am looking for suggestions and feedback on an idea I have.

OpenStudy is, first of all, a superb idea and service for allowing people to quickly access resources regarding help on questions for their courses, homework, etc. Although the accessibility and format for how to assist others (Drawing, Equations, Attachments, Text, etc.) is, in my opinion, limiting and somewhat frustrating for providing solutions and working to help someone really understand and learn efficiently - leading inexorably to issues such as (Continued...)

Answer 1

A. People asking for answers to test questions and not getting any conceptual or arithmetic experience.
B. Low-time investment by mentors/tutors/educators as a response to low investment from peers.
C. Solutions that are confusing or not as clear as could be...
Etc.

And though I point out these limitations, I want to make sure to emphasize that I love the program and what it offers, and would like to get some feedback on the following idea, as was first mentioned as the content of this topic.

(Continued...)

Answer 2

Open Study is awesome. So far we agree :D

Answer 3

For A
Tell them that cheating is against their school and Open Study's Term and Conditions.
http://openstudy.com/terms-and-conditions
Your next step would be to report it, tag a mod, pm/m a mod.

Answer 4

pm/dm**

Answer 5

B.
We are not paid by Open Study, so we come on and go off of OS whenever we feel like it or whenever we need to. Not even moderators are paid! Everyone except some admins (but they really don't help others on OS) are volunteers. We volunteer our time to help others. And a lot of new users just make an account post their question and log off. So we really can't interact with them and see where they need help.

Answer 6

C.
If the user posts a question and shows all of his work and tells where he is confused then we can help him understand the problem better. Even after we explain it and the asker doesn't understand it then we can have another user come in to the picture and try to see if their explanation is better. Also many users just want answers so even though they don't know what we did they take the answer and leave. Also the main reason they are confused is because they don't communicate. They come back and check every 20 minutes. And we are just waiting for them to reply. So to solve a simple problem they take up to an hour. Also it would be much easier to help them if we know where they are confused.

Answer 7

So my idea is the following, and I would love honest, open, and invested help on it.

I would like to work with some of the mentors and educators on Open Study to put together a project that would offer people an in depth course to follow along with as it progresses openly on OS.

The course would be 3-4 educators coming together and finding students that are invested in learning and having trouble getting the inspiration to learn, or having a hard time with subjects and needing mentoring, and providing an Open Free Course to them.

It would involve 2-3 hours of time by each educator each week to help with the following,

*Providing a question/answer-lecture style (through text) to help students find confidence in their ability to do course-work, understand concepts, etc.
*Providing a 'homework session' (with all of us) to give a walkthrough providing 'similar-problem explanations' and helping them to arrive at their own solutions in a 'full-homework-coverage' mentoring session.
*Asking and finding interests of students and working to come up with problems and questions that are geared to be associated with those interests and getting them excited about learning and having conceptual understanding of what they are doing.
*Using a "Teach as the best way to learn" method to ask students to provide others with help regarding learned topics as a way to "feel good", "be confident", and learn "interdependent skills".

If anyone is interested in what this would entail and how it would work and is willing to work on a project like this, please contact me by messaging me. I am not looking for just any educator wanting to help but people with specific skills-sets, motivation, a passion for learning and helping, and with an interest to invest time into this.

The experience, learning curve, recommendations, success, and learned methods of best practice will be used for a later project that will be much larger in scope that will be geared towards teaching others to be confident, helpful, excited, efficient and happy life-long-learners!

Thanks for your time.

Answer 8

This would be a free service of course and would be a great investment into the success and future efficacy of the OpenStudy program I believe. =)

Answer 9

"A. People asking for answers to test questions and not getting any conceptual or arithmetic experience. "

Yes. People break the rules a lot. It is encouraged for proper users to nudge people back to the rules and not using it as just an answer site. Sadly, there are so many abusers that many of the better users get frustrated and give up.

"B. Low-time investment by mentors/tutors/educators as a response to low investment from peers."

I am not sure what you are pointing out. 99% of the users are students, not any from of mentor, tutor, or educator. This sort of amateur involvement does have the problem you describe. However, that also allows it to be free. If everyone were a professional, they would need to be paid.

Now, having a split system with some professionals complementing the amateurs would be nice. Also, training on how to tutor would be good.

"C. Solutions that are confusing or not as clear as could be... " This also has to do with the amateur status of 99% of the users.


As for the rest, you would need to talk to @Preetha about offering anything through the site, however there have been past versions of doing things like this. The Mechanical MOOC was one, Saylor.Org also looked at using OS but decided not too, several "study on your own" sites use OS as a peer support forum.

Answer 10

Also your ideas would take quite a lot of time and the people who come on to OS for help would not like to stay for 2-3 hours a week and learn something but rather get the answer and run away. It would be nice if the users first had the desire to learn first and not just get answers to their questions.

Answer 11

@TheSmartOne People use lots of MOOCs, so the use of it for classes might work. There are a lot of people that fell behind and now it is huring them. They go to an assortment of sites to try and catch up or review. Something more personalized could really help with that.