Product Ideas
Curriculum Expansion/Support
What to study and how to study it are more important than where to study it and for how long. The best teachers are on the Internet. The best books are on the Internet. The best peers are on the Internet. The tools for learning are abundant. It’s the desire to learn that’s scarce.
- Naval Ravikant
How can we improve DataCamp's learning experience and grow the platform?
4 Ideas:
- Focus on more Student-to-Student (video) interaction
- Digital learning assistant
- More attention on adaptive learning
- Get real world assignments and get hired through DataCamp
STUDENT-TO-STUDENT INTERACTION
“In times where small instructor-led classrooms tend to be the exception, electronic learning solutions can offer more collaboration and interaction with experts and peers, as well as a higher success rate than the live alternative.”
- Keith Bachman
If you spent time in a traditional classroom where students rarely interacted with one another or with the teacher, you would likely deem the instruction as poor quality teaching.
However, this somehow seems to pass muster in many online courses and programs. All learners crave interaction, whether in face-to-face settings or online environments, and research shows that interaction can increase learning and lessen the psychological distance involved in online learning.
(Mayes, Luebeck, Ku, Akarasriworn, & Korkmaz, 2011)
DataCamp knows who's studying what and what they're currently doing. It's actually quite easy to match students based on their current status and facilitate an in-app live chat possibility where students can talk and discuss the course.
Even more convenient is video chat.
You've finished your lesson and you're going over your notes or doing your assignments when you realize you're missing a piece of information or there's something you don't quite understand.
Video chat makes it easy and quick to get in touch with the teacher or another student to ask your questions.
Bonus: Extra money or a better review for a teacher who gives students the chance to video call them when something isn't clear.
Sounds impossible? It's actually not!
Teacher can set time frames when they're available for follow-up questions.
PERSONAL LEARNING ASSISTANT
“The students of the future will demand the learning support that is appropriate for their situation or context. Nothing more, nothing less. And they want it at the moment the need arises. Not sooner, not later. Mobile devices will be a key technology to providing that learning support.”
- Dr. Marcus Specht
A bot is a service, powered by rules and sometimes artificial intelligence, that you interact with via a chat interface or voice.
A personal learning assistant uses powerful natural language processing technology to provide instant assessment of students’ open-response answers, along with qualitative feedback.
It acts as Siri for education by engaging students in adaptive tutoring conversations and helping them master concepts and solve problems.
We're training data scientist on the highest level, we can even crowdsource our personal learning assistant and let our students build it! Let's stop with those BS assignments and let them work on a real use case!
ADAPTIVE LEARNING
“When it comes to eLearning, content means everything. If eLearning content is not masterfully designed, all the rest will just go down the drain.”
- Christopher Pappas
Adaptive learning is an online educational system that understands a student and modifies the presentation of material accordingly.
In an adaptive learning solution, the system keeps a track of what a learner does. It’s smart enough to analyze a learner’s actions and is capable of adapting the training that better suits that individual, for instance by giving them access to more relevant learning materials.
Though this is all automated, it still requires a lot of human contribution, and actually requires more content to be created.
It’s seen that the best teachers have always adapted their teaching to the requirements of their students.
How can we implement that in an online course?
REAL WORLD ASSIGNMENTS & JOBS
The most effective, successful professionals are constantly learning, they take the time to apply what they have learned, and they continually work to improve themselves.
- Joel Gardner
DataCamp is currently working on a two-sided business model, with Students and Teachers.
Let's add 'Companies' and create a three-sided business model.
Companies need Data Scientists and are willing to pay for useful leads. DataCamp can bring those leads and it gives us some extra skin in the game. The quality of our service has to be outstanding to create outstanding data scientists.
Bonus: Teachers can collaborate with companies to create useful real world course assignments together. Let's make it real, it will push everyone to perform better.