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Show HN: I made a cheap alternative to college-level math & physics tutoring

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151–160 of 209 posts

Re: Show HN: I made a cheap alternative to college-level math & physics tutoring

#151

This looks great. My only suggestion is to be more specific and clear on pricing, rather than 1/10th of the price.

Ah thanks for your feedback. I was worried that if I put $10/week, then it's not immediately obvious that it's a magnitude less expensive. Would it perhaps work if I highlight/emphasize the $10/week in the description below on the website? Or do you think it must be in the title?

Re: Show HN: I made a cheap alternative to college-level math & physics tutoring

#152
post #51

You should read Imposters in the Temple by Martin Anderson for a full critique of academia’s pedagogical failures.

This book looks absolutely riveting - just read the preview on Amazon. Which e-books platform did you buy it from?

Re: Show HN: I made a cheap alternative to college-level math & physics tutoring

#153

Interesting concept, and a unique landing page! The 3D carousel confused me a bit, especially when it kept rotating while I tried watching one of the videos.

Ah OK, so I better make the carousel pause when a video is playing then!

Re: Show HN: I made a cheap alternative to college-level math & physics tutoring

#154
post #59

I think, as a kind of "get an explanation for a specific thing" this is a fantastic addition to the world of teaching/tutoring and hope it succeeds. I tutor my son in engineering level subjects some times, but I find that I need tutoring myself too to understand some of the things :-). There are various well-known homework-help sites where you can post questions and get answers from "experts", but, none that I know t…

Thank you for your kind remarks. As for the need for more videos on the "approach" of solving problems, that really resonates with me. I always wanted to learn how those mathematicians "see" matrices for example, how they "think" of what to do in the first place, etc.

If you're ever interested to try teaching/learning on explanations.app, I'm always here!

Re: Show HN: I made a cheap alternative to college-level math & physics tutoring

#155

Just a note, looks like you're using google fonts (or similar) for your icons, so people (i.e. me) with strict unlock origin settings will just see big text labels. Here's a screenshot https://i.ibb.co/qFc0X2g/image.png

Ah, which alternative icons would you recommend that wouldn't get blocked by strick unlock origin settings?

Re: Show HN: I made a cheap alternative to college-level math & physics tutoring

#156

> it’s very hard to catch-up: once you fall behind, you have no way to review past material efficiently enough to compensate the difference - like credit card debt It is surprising how many people working in education do not understand this. We have clear understanding on technical debt or cycles of poverty but absolutely no understanding of how learning debt evolves among students. It is so evident that couple of mo…

>"All the debt is assumed to vanish when you start a new session. Nobody acknowledges that the kid has been collecting debt for a decade now"

I think you articulate it really well. It speaks to me at a personal level because my stunted academic growth in college still affects me today, and it will never go away.

Good luck with Filo!

Re: Show HN: I made a cheap alternative to college-level math & physics tutoring

#158

Is this a video version of stack exchange, where you pay to get your questions answered on video? Anyway I've given and received actual tutoring and imho it just can't be done on video. E.g. in a real session, the tutor might give you a problem to solve (pen and paper) while they sit next to you. You start working on it and when you hesitate somewhere, or if your approach to the solution starts going wrong, the tutor…

Yes, the teaching process is often a two-way and long conversation. Stack Exchange works in the case where the questioner already has enough mastery over the material to ask a well-posed question. But many students don't even have the mastery and they never get around to asking questions on SE, and if they do, that question is quickly closed. So you never see those students online at all. Maybe on more niche forums w…

Yes you guys are right. This "video-based Stack Exchange format" will have clear disadvantages. You can't observe the non-verbal queues in-person for example that helps you discover the root of their misunderstandings etc.

>Any sort of teaching methodology will serve some students at the expense of others Yes, I admit this isn't helpful to all types of students, though I wish it can at least be helpful to an initial set of students

Re: Show HN: I made a cheap alternative to college-level math & physics tutoring

#159

I am always curious regarding new education solutions. I firmly believe the US pre-college education systems are fundamentally broken most benefit from edtech (huge fan of Khan Academy). As an MIT alum myself ('89), I am surprised to hear your description of your experience at MIT. Did you experience this across all classes and departments or only for a few (e.g. 18.01 which is required for most freshman)? While cert…

I'm also enthusiastic about new education solutions, and I found traditional MOOCs are 1. too long for one sit; 2. passive; 3. lack personalization. So I'm building a new solution that aims at solving these problems: https://afaik.io/ , and you can learn college physics and calculus for free. The goal is to map out the prerequisite structures among all subjects as knowledge is actually a continuous map, and let every…

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: I made a cheap alternative to college-level math & physics tutoring

#160

I am always curious regarding new education solutions. I firmly believe the US pre-college education systems are fundamentally broken most benefit from edtech (huge fan of Khan Academy). As an MIT alum myself ('89), I am surprised to hear your description of your experience at MIT. Did you experience this across all classes and departments or only for a few (e.g. 18.01 which is required for most freshman)? While cert…

I couldn't convey the technicality across, but the bad experiences I had were mostly localized in course 6 classes - Intro to Algorithms, Design & Analysis of Algorithms, Intro to Machine Learning. I actually did very well in math & physics because Office Hours were much more available, and they tried teaching in different formats (e.g. TEAL).

>incredibly open policy on working together Yes this was mostly the case - except for course 6. Also, I - sadly - didn't have study groups. For a combination of reasons, including my flaws, I just wasn't good at making friends in college.

As for how it's different from a job board with zoom - the key is to solve the "scarcity" issue, in my opinion. Teaching 1-on-1 for n students scales O(n). If there's a way to teach n students O(log(n)) i.e. address all overlapping needs with videos that can be replayed infinitely, then address remaining personalization problems, that's the approach I believe in

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