Very good question. I would recommend doing both I suppose. On Stacks, we match you up with buddies based on all of the courses you are interested in rather than just one. So our algorithm may recommend that you match up with someone who is interested in Computer Science, Literature, and Psychology; rather than just matching you up with someone in your Computer Science class.
The gray overlay is supposed to highlight the search bar. It's supposed to make everything on the site gray except for the search bar. Is that not the case for you? Is the search bar also graying out? If so, that's a bug I need to fix. So far I haven't been able to reproduce it on my end, but doesn't mean there isn't a bug.
Stacks isn't promising the ability to study over the Internet necessarily; however, you could if you wanted. For example, you could ask questions via chat. On the other hand, you could meet on Stacks and then move to Skype to study. Or even more, you could potentially meet up in person if you have gotten to know your buddy well enough.
Think of it like how you might think of Tinder. Tinder is called online dating, but you wouldn't necessarily have a date on Tinder.
Thanks. The Tinder comparison is fairly clear, but there's still something nagging at me. Tinder (I think) is partially based on physical location. I suppose there's always "cyber", but that's kinda what I'm talking about. "Cyber", well, cybersex is a very distant and unwanted second-place compared to the real thing. I'm thinking there's something similar here. Studying with someone else, it seems to me, has a strong physical component that requires a face-to-face meeting. I don't remember adding location information to my profile, so I guess your algo doesn't match location? It might be useful when trying to create a study group.
Otherwise, for pair or group studying over the internet, I haven't been satisfied with anything that I've seen. That adds some difficulty to the social interactions once the connections are made, and anything that can be done to ease the introductions would be helpful. For physical meetings, it seems like the initial communication might be 'Hi, I'm so-and-so, if you're interested, we can meet in the student library at 10:00AM', or something like that. For Internet-based studying, I'm not sure how that interaction should go. Something like 'Skype me @mynamehere at 10AM EST and we'll study together' doesn't quite seem right to me, because IMing or IRC seems too cumbersome and slow to be useful for studying. I think I'm just ignorant of the tools that can be useful here, but what I've seen so far appears lacking to me.
Another thing, how do I actually find a list of my buddies? OK, I see them now under 'Notifications'. That's unexpected. I was looking for 'My Buddies' or something like that. I'm not sure what 'Notifications' would be for.
.. and the gray overlay does highlight the search bar, I just didn't immediately notice it. My eye is on the 'Search' button that I just clicked, and that gets covered by the overlay, so it gave me the feeling of 'WTF just happened?'
I sometimes feel like a bit of a dick when I critique the work of others, so I'm thankful that you're not taking this the wrong way. In fact, the only reason why I'm looking at this at all is because I think you've done something cool here, and it's potentially very useful. I think you're doing a good job here, and I hope the best for your project.
That's true, it doesn't match location at the moment, but we may add something like that in the future if that's what people want.
Hopefully as more people sign up, our algorithm will be able to make better study buddy suggestions. Although this isn't a guarantee and is somewhat part of the experiment in launching this site. If our algorithm can't make quality suggestions, then we may have to rethink our strategy.
Studying online is intentionally meant to cover a very broad spectrum of possibilities. It could mean meeting up in person or online to study. It could mean asking and answering questions from time to time in the chat. It could also mean just staying up-to-date with what courses your buddies are taking to help each other stay motivated.
Your list of buddies will show up in notifications, but your full list of buddies will show up on your profile under the Following/Followers section.
You shouldn't feel like a dick lol. All of these concerns and suggestions have been awesome! And they are things that are great for me to be thinking about! I very much appreciate you checking out the project :)
Crap, one more thing I meant to add -- Stanford Lagunita (lagunita.stanford.edu) has a number of interesting courses that you might be interested in indexing.
That's a good idea. I was planning on sending this out to r/learnprogramming on Monday. I'll have to make sure this makes it to r/cscareerquestions as well
I think this is a good idea. I've thought about doing something like this for books as well. I haven't yet thought about doing this for programming languages or frameworks, but maybe I should.
Well, some of the courses will have large overlaps.
You might have 5 different courses teaching "intro to python".
Also, if a study group successfully finished an intro course, they might want to take an advanced course together. Or do some non-MOOC advanced learning.
After all, people aren't taking courses in a vacuum. They're taking them as part of a learning path. That path can include additional courses, exercises, projects, and a lot more.
Our algorithm starts working as soon as you enable the "Find Study Buddies" feature. Also, it starts working anytime you add a new course.
At the moment, it takes about 10 seconds to complete. So if you haven't gotten any suggestions within 1-3 minutes, then there may not be anyone else looking for a study buddy for those courses, yet.
I just launched this feature today, so the number of potential suggestions will be as low as it will ever be. I plan on getting the word out on several different sites, which will increase the number of potential suggestions.
We'll send you an email when you have new suggestions, so you don't need to continuously check back in with the site.
Also, for which courses are you looking for a study buddy? I can make sure I spread the word to people and communities who have similar interests.
Are they on Coursera or edX? Or are they on they're own platform?
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Ahh! Looks like are hosted own their own sites. I will take a look at adding these. If you want, you can email me (admin@stacks.courses) a way to contact you and I can give you an update when I have added these.
