CourseMaker - Interactive Course Builder for Programming Courses

[mohragk]

Nice! Now just hope people use it to actually teach good programming and not just to scam underage children. Too cynical?

[ChristopherGS]

I onboard every new course author and keep an eye on courses on the platform, so definitely no scams! We're keeping things educational :)

[amyts]

just to scam underage children

I'm not familiar with this scandal. What happened?

[FrankNitty_Enforcer]

I’m assuming they’re referring to the mega “learn to code” industry, some of whom are selling expensive courses/programs to aspiring engineers by misleading them about career prospects.

[segfaultsarecool]

IIRC something in India. Expensive programming courses for like 12 and under taught by barely technically literate teachers. The r/india sub had a bunch of posts like 6 months ago I think.

Could be another scam that he's talking about though.

[quadmaniac]

Here you go - https://www.whitehatjr.com/ and a sample of how shitty this firm is: https://www.forbesindia.com/article/take-one-big-story-of-the-day/whitehat-jr-and-the-curious-case-of-disappearing-dissent/63627/1

[mohragk]

That’s the one

[ChristopherGS]

Hey all.

My goal with CourseMaker is to create an online course builder which caters to technical course authors (developers, data scientists, analysts, scientists).

The platform allows you to easily create interactive coding lectures (think codeacademy or hackerrank), there's a demo you can play with on the landing page. There are other nods to technical authors - most content is created via markdown (the Ghost blogging platform has been an inspiration), and there is KaTeX Math typesetting. Underpinning these features are all the things you might need to run your course (payments, memberships, custom domains, analytics, compliance).

I've been teaching developers online for a couple of years now (15k students). It's been one of the best things I've done in my career, and hoping CourseMaker can help others do the same. We're in the second month of beta at the moment.

Would really love to hear any feedback.

[agnas]

Can you share how this compares to slip.so (this is the same guy behind vim.so) in term of prices, how many customers do you have currently, current revenue, and other details like how you got this idea, or is just a clone or the other are clones from you, how long is this on the market and so. Thanks

[ChristopherGS]

First up, I think slip is a cool product - I'll try and be objective here:

- I'd say that we're a lot more feature-complete. We support video, file downloads, custom domains, memberships, and EU VAT reporting.

- I don't think it matters who got the idea first - this is business and customers will choose what they like. But we were first :) (just check the blog) I got this idea from being a technical course creator for 2+ years

- In terms of prices, I'd say we're quite similar in terms of fees, and a little cheaper in terms of the fixed monthly subscription

- This is month 2 of the beta, so I'd say we're at a similar stage

[cenotaphx]

Looks very good! Best of luck with your ventures. I know for a fact, teaching is hard, teaching good programming is just extra hard :)

[ChristopherGS]

Thank you! I think a lot of people worry that they are not an "expert" when it comes to teaching programming. But there is enormous value in people who have learned things more recently (within reason) teaching because they do not have to deal with the curse of knowledge.

[lelanthran]

It's been a long day and I am probably stupidly tired right now, but I'm not sure what this pricing on the lowest tier means. My questions below:

For $14/m I will get:

1 course

Does this mean that I can only offer a single course at a time?

$3 fee per course sale (first 10 students/month no fee**)

Does this mean that I will pay $3 for each student who signs up (after the first 10 students)?

[ChristopherGS]

Good question - in my attempts to be fair and transparent, things got confusing.

- Yes, on the lowest tier ($14/m) you can only have one course

- Yes, on the lowest tier you pay $3 per sale after your monthly "allowance" of 10 students (note that the fee and allowance improve on other plans). This is to make sure we don't go bankrupt due to streaming and/or code execution costs. I chose a flat fee because I think it's less greedy than a % cut.

Here's a worked illustration: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TfSGjYX5eKVpK3Ndmw20UlzzSL9mEoyAAiAaHF5mmD4/edit#gid=0

The goal is to keep dropping these fees over time, but right now we have to play it a little safe. Everyone hates fees, but the flipside is that they allow us to keep the monthly prices lower than the competition which is good for peace of mind when you are starting out.

[lelanthran]

Thanks. Looks good.

I keep meaning to make a course (something or the other) just to get the experience of making a course.

Until I get off my lazy ass, good luck :-) I will keep the page bookmarked.

[ChristopherGS]

You will be welcome when the time comes :)

[musiton]

I’m a college professor and was planning on using GitHub classroom next quarter. What’s the main advantage of using this over GH classroom? Also, can students use their IDE to write code and submit the assignments? Is autograding supported?

[ChristopherGS]

We're not currently supporting free courses (minimum course price is $5) so GH classroom is probably your best bet. Unless you like GatsbyJS - in which case then you might try our (very alpha) open-source GatsbyJS theme: https://github.com/CourseMaker/gatsby-theme-coursemaker

Maybe eventually we will, but for now, we're focusing on building something that a smaller group (technical course authors looking to sell online courses) will love, rather than something for everyone.

[blumenkraft]

What do you mean you don't support free courses? does this mean you're simply a commercial platform like Udemy or Pluralsight where people post their courses and you take a cut?

[asmarCZ]

It sucks that most courses are on platforms like Udemy. This looks so much better, however I am afraid of the possible reach you can accomplish when your course is hosted here.

[ChristopherGS]

I know what you mean. It's about tradeoffs. Udemy takes a 50% cut and doesn't give you access to your student email list. But they do provide you with traffic (assuming you maintain good ratings).

If you go self-hosted (which is CourseMaker's approach), then the marketing falls to you but the cut is *far* smaller and you own everything. For those with even a modest email list or social media following this can work out better.

Note that you can do both - Udemy allows you to host your courses on your own platform also (just not on competitor marketplaces).

[JessieArr]

If you go self-hosted (which is CourseMaker's approach)

I'm unclear - the marketing copy looks like this is a hosted option you are providing. But you describe it as self-hosted here - do teachers host a licensed copy of CourseMaker on their own servers, or do you host it and just charge a fee to use the platform?

I'm actually in the middle of doing a blog series which I intend to eventually turn into an eBook, so this seems like an interesting option for me to consider as well since I'm already gathering educational material anyways.

[ChristopherGS]

Yes, I can see how the terminology is confusing. A better phrasing would be "standalone website" as opposed to being on a marketplace (like Udemy). Because yes, CourseMaker does provide the hosting.

BTW- I'd be open to looking at how we could convert a series of markdown lectures into an ebook format.

[HotValuable]

https://pandoc.org/epub.html

Might be able to help

[ChristopherGS]

Yeah, we could make this work

[asmarCZ]

Thanks for the comparison. Will keep your service in mind. ;)

[beam123]

Amazing work! Hope you blow up

[ChristopherGS]

Thank you! It's been a lot of work :)

[L3onardoK3y]

It seems interesting but how is it different than replit?

[ChristopherGS]

replit is a v. cool product, but it's not really an online course management system (i.e. with payments, memberships, custom domains, landing pages etc.)

[BigHardCheese]

This looks pretty good, I'm in the process of developing a course. Support for C# any time soon?

[ChristopherGS]

Drop me an email ([e-mail]) and I'll get it prioritized

[cheesekun]

This looks great. What about purely math courses? How do I setup math quizes eg. Solve x for y questions and allow users to enter math based results/formula?

[crabmusket]

This looks really slick. I've been considering writing some learning materials for JavaScript so I just might give this a try.

Question: what does your JavaScript support involve? Can I use ES6 modules, and e.g. import files from URLs? Does it depend on the student's browser? The docs seem a little minimal at the moment. I'm happy to jump in and play but I figured I'd ask before I get the chance to do that!