Did everyone see that LearnHub was covered on TechCrunch yesterday? LearnHub Relaunches Its Social Learning Network
Certainly not the most positive article, but pretty good compared to all the projects that they’ve heavily criticized on the recently.
TechCrunch, in case you don’t know, is one of the most widely read blogs in the world, by most measures in the top 3. Great publicity for LearnHub!
Actually, that’s where I found LearnHub. I’m thrilled they had it there.
Actually, I’m planning to blog about that…I do find many aspects of it overwhelming. It seems there are many audiences’ needs that are trying to be met all at once! It’s a difficult information design and UI project.
True, it may be overwhelming at first, Kim. Learning something new is always – unless it’s over simplified. Once you begin to really delve and get accustom to LearnHub and all it has to offer, you will be glad to have a large array of tools at your disposal. You’re not limited to a box, if you want to create a successful community with a variety of content sources you are able to. You don’t have to combine 20 sites together just to develop what you really want.
I think the critique was a good one… esp. coming from TechCrunch, like you pointed JohnPhilipGreen. Glad to hear that it also brought some new visitors to the site for their first visit and introduction to LearnHub.
Only thing I wasn’t too sure about was this line from the article: “With so many options to choose from, students may lose direction, which may lead experienced tutors to choose to use sites designed exclusively to promote their specialty, as eduFire does with video tutoring.”
How does one loose their own way in this regard? And, about eduFire…. I’m not a fan of their website as I find their site to be a little confusing to the first time visitor and doesn’t seam to have as great & friendly of a community as found on LeanHub. And lastly, it only a teaching website for languages. But thats just one mans opinion.
leant about LearnHub in TechCrunch and am here now :)
John and lechuck,
First great job. just one small comment about a work which is otherwise perfect:
LearnHub feels like a destination website for me, one where you would browse from page to page, read articles, friend people you already know.
So maybe I’m just too “new” here but I haven’t yet felt the need to actually take on a course (“enroll”) and actually learn actively with a tutor, which I guess is the ultimate objective of this web app.
One suggestion maybe is to show cues from students who actually joined a course; maybe they can submit a feedback at the end saying how helpful it was for them (network effect). or maybe they can show “credits” below their profile picture stating they actually know about a particular subject, because they actually followed seriously a course, did the tests etc.
The real-life comparison of this would be like going around an university, from halls to different building, reading boards, meeting students along the way, etc, maybe lurking in what’s up in a room, but never actually feel the need to enroll and get into one.
Learnhubbers, I realize that learnhub is relatively new, but I would like to see it soar as the top learning environment that engages everyone in meaningful learning. I think the key word is sustainability.
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JohnPhilipGreen said – Thu, 12 Jun 2008 17:47:22 -0000 ( Flag Edit Link )
Cool! Yeah, LearnHub certainly got a lot of traffic yesterday from that post.
Did you agree with some of the criticism about the site being hard to navigate or overwhelming?