So mstevens, Konkvistador and me had an IRC discussion which sparked an interesting idea.
The basic idea is to get people to read and understand the sequences. As a reward for doing this, there could either be some sort of “medals” or “badges” for users or a karma reward. The “badges” solution would require that changes are made to the site design, but the karma rewards could work without changes, by getting upvotes from the lw crowd.
To confirm that the person actually understood what is written in the sequences, “instructors” are needed. The student could write a post that he’s going to read sequence X, if the instructor confirms that the student has succeeded and understood that sequence, the instructor comments the student’s post and asks the public to upvote the parent to a fixed amount of karma.
To test a student’s knowledge, the instructor and the student hold a video chat when the student thinks he’s ready. The video chat serves mainly as a disincentive to cheating, as cheating would still be easily possible (just have a browser open on the screen), but people feel watched and are discouraged from cheating. In the video chat, the instructor can use both the sequences flashcards that circulate (e.g. the Anki cards) and questions he prepared himself. The instructor simply has to judge whether the student read and understood the sequence he wanted to learn.
If this idea gets approval, the next thing to do would be trying it out!
So mstevens, Konkvistador and me had an IRC discussion which sparked an interesting idea.
The basic idea is to get people to read and understand the sequences. As a reward for doing this, there could either be some sort of “medals” or “badges” for users or a karma reward. The “badges” solution would require that changes are made to the site design, but the karma rewards could work without changes, by getting upvotes from the lw crowd.
To confirm that the person actually understood what is written in the sequences, “instructors” are needed. The student could write a post that he’s going to read sequence X, if the instructor confirms that the student has succeeded and understood that sequence, the instructor comments the student’s post and asks the public to upvote the parent to a fixed amount of karma.
To test a student’s knowledge, the instructor and the student hold a video chat when the student thinks he’s ready. The video chat serves mainly as a disincentive to cheating, as cheating would still be easily possible (just have a browser open on the screen), but people feel watched and are discouraged from cheating. In the video chat, the instructor can use both the sequences flashcards that circulate (e.g. the Anki cards) and questions he prepared himself. The instructor simply has to judge whether the student read and understood the sequence he wanted to learn.
If this idea gets approval, the next thing to do would be trying it out!