Could you tell us more about your business model?
Because I don't like this very much: http://codehs.com/pricing
What do you think about the Khan Academy CS stuff?
It is a tricky business you are in, but could work out very well if you can harness the power of community. You should focus on this idea "give students credits when they help students who are further behind than they are".
I would suggest a slight change in the term "credits" to distance yourself from the money=knowledge associations. Think more "pay it forward" economy where you earn points by helping others. Seeding the economy with a bunch of paid Tutors could get the economy started.
Tutors will just earn "help points" in the system like all other students but they will sell them to you.
To get an exchange economy going you will probably need to move away from the crippleware approach(http://codehs.com/pricing). You should offer the real service (answering questions when you are stuck), and after users use up their free points ask them to help others.
Yeah, we are definitely planning to switch to more of that system for a pricing model, and we are not happy with our current pricing. It was kind of an MVP for pricing to get something up there that is fairly reasonable as we're getting going. Thanks for the ideas!
In terms of the Khan CS stuff, I think their editor is really really cool. They have a lot of cool real time features and number scrubbers and color pickers. I think it's just a very different approach to teaching than we have, where theirs is very much based on tinkering, which I, personally, don't think is as good. Definitely a really cool tool though. We've gotten a lot of ideas from it for how to improve our editor.
What do you think about the Khan Academy CS stuff?
It is a tricky business you are in, but could work out very well if you can harness the power of community. You should focus on this idea "give students credits when they help students who are further behind than they are".
I would suggest a slight change in the term "credits" to distance yourself from the money=knowledge associations. Think more "pay it forward" economy where you earn points by helping others. Seeding the economy with a bunch of paid Tutors could get the economy started. Tutors will just earn "help points" in the system like all other students but they will sell them to you.
To get an exchange economy going you will probably need to move away from the crippleware approach(http://codehs.com/pricing). You should offer the real service (answering questions when you are stuck), and after users use up their free points ask them to help others.