I wonder if anyone has thought about setting up an online community dedicated to peer-to-peer tutoring. The idea is that if I want to learn “Differential Geometry” and know “Python programming”, and you want to learn “Python programming” and know “Differential geometry,” then we can agree to tutor each other online. The features of the community would be to support peer-to-peer tutoring by:
Facilitating matchups between compatible tutors
Allowing for more than two people to participate in a tutoring arrangement
Providing reputation-based incentives to honor tutoring agreements and putting effort into tutoring
Allowing other members to “sit in” on tutoring sessions, if they are made public
Allowing the option to record tutoring sessions
Providing members with access to such recorded sessions and “course materials”
Providing a forum to arrange other events
With such functions, the community would have some overlap with other online learning platforms, but the focus of the community would be to provide free, quality personalized teaching.
The LessWrong community could build the first version of this peer tutoring system. It has people with broad interests, high intellectual standards, and many engineers who could help develop some of the infrastructure. The first iteration of the community would be small, and many of the above features (e.g. a reputation system, and tools for facilitating matchups) would not be needed. The first problems we would need to solve are:
Where should we host the community? (e.g. Google groups?)
What are some basic ground rules to ensure the integrity of the community and ensure safety?
Where can we provide a place for people to list which subjects they want to learn and which subjects they can teach?
Which software should we use for tutoring?
How can people publicize their tutoring schedule in case others want to “sit in”?
How can people record their tutoring sessions if they wish, and how can they make these available?
How should the community be administrated? Who should be put in charge of organizing the development of the community?
Peer-to-peer “knowledge exchanges”
I wonder if anyone has thought about setting up an online community dedicated to peer-to-peer tutoring. The idea is that if I want to learn “Differential Geometry” and know “Python programming”, and you want to learn “Python programming” and know “Differential geometry,” then we can agree to tutor each other online. The features of the community would be to support peer-to-peer tutoring by:
Facilitating matchups between compatible tutors
Allowing for more than two people to participate in a tutoring arrangement
Providing reputation-based incentives to honor tutoring agreements and putting effort into tutoring
Allowing other members to “sit in” on tutoring sessions, if they are made public
Allowing the option to record tutoring sessions
Providing members with access to such recorded sessions and “course materials”
Providing a forum to arrange other events
Where should we host the community? (e.g. Google groups?)
What are some basic ground rules to ensure the integrity of the community and ensure safety?
Where can we provide a place for people to list which subjects they want to learn and which subjects they can teach?
Which software should we use for tutoring?
How can people publicize their tutoring schedule in case others want to “sit in”?
How can people record their tutoring sessions if they wish, and how can they make these available?
How should the community be administrated? Who should be put in charge of organizing the development of the community?
How should we recruit new members?