Opinions needed: SnapQuiz - New App for Homework Help

chalob SG

Good Evening SGForums community,

My name is Geoffrey, and I am a programmer. I recently had this idea about using IT and social networking (basically, an app) to change the highly tuition driven education landscape in Singapore.

The main inspiration for this application came from sites like StackOverflow and Quora, where we see tons of questions and answers being posted by people all over the world, with topics ranging from computer programming and business management. I just thought, why can't this model be applied to education in Singapore? Can we have a central place where good practice questions can be shared? Can any student who is encountering difficulty with his homework, simply put it up online on an open forum, snap a photo of his problem if needed, and rely on smart students or tutors in the crowd for help and hints?

Over the past few months, some of my friends and I hacked together this app (Web and Android) which is called SnapQuiz. You can access my application, as well as find out about the main functions at snapquiz.sg

The past few weeks, I have gotten tutors from tuition agencies to join so that the answers provided can be credible and of a high quality. I am now trying to get real student users to use this application that I have built and start a community.

As such, I would really love the participation and feedback from users in HardwareZone. If you are a tutor/student, or simply someone who is interested in improving education in Singapore - could you give this app a try, tell me what you love or hate about it, and what would make people like yourself share this app with other students/friends?

Please note that this application is completely free and open for students - I am not here to sell and make money from students, but I hope to eventually build something that students will find useful.

Geoffrey

eagle SG

Hi,

I took notice of this a while ago. I realised this is a project by SMU students. I'm in the midst of planning a business and website on education media, which serves to help my own students, and also to be able to open up help to students from lower income families for free. I didn't manage to find your contact because I do have some comments from the educational business point of view.

Your SWOT analysis mentioned that OpenLectures.sg is lacking credibility in terms of content because it is by students.

If I'm not wrong, your current project is similar to forums like Homework Forum, but mainly by students, and probably occasionally with tutors on board.

My main gist is, your SWOT analysis did not include forums like SgForums Homework forum, SgClub Forum, where educators like me help students for free.

Now I shall talk about the plus points:

The plus point is the filter function. And it seems like the only plus point apart from the convenience of an app to enable easy upload of photos.

My comments came because I had an idea the start of the year to build my own forum to help my own students. And I was planning on using the Tapatalk app to enable easy upload of photos. In terms of credibility of answers, I dare say that the tutors from my centre have probably better credentials than 80%~90% of the tutors from tuition agencies, on top of each possessing at least a few years of teaching experience.

Hope you don't get me wrong. Your idea and website is really good. To be honest, I really love it. The functions are there, but my key is, if I were to build a simple forum with the app too, what would the chief differentiating factor of your website?

Also, in terms of marketing, how visible is it from the search engines, given that the postings are primarily photos based? You know too that phones photos are labelled in numbers and not words, which make it tough to search too in google images.

Lastly, I think Smart Students and Tutors from tuition agencies on board probably may not sell well. You need tutors with really good credentials and teaching experience [*ahem* the tutors in this forum including Weews, UltimaOnline, and me *ahem*], market them up, so as to boost the credibility of SnapQuiz.

My point: For StackOverflow, answers may have mistakes, but the programmers will know immediately if there is a syntax error because the compiler will alert them.

But in the case of studies.... Supposed there are students who are unsure or confused on concepts, but like to share what they "know" (which is a good thing to encourage in schools) and the wrong concepts are shared. Danger is, on the student's side, wrong answers and concepts may not surface until examinations, and learning the wrong things this way may be detrimental in the long run! This is the main difference from StackOverflow.

Students nowadays are already so busy, that they simply do not have the time to keep making mistakes although that's the best way to learn.

I can go on and on, and also on learning theories etc because this is something that's ultimately student centric. It is an education based design, so I think it should not be just based on inspiration or technicals or business, but also on how the human brain learns best and how this technology can assist in that. But I shall stop here.

We can discuss this further, you may pm me if you are interested.

chalob SG

Hi eagle,

Sorry for the late response.

First, I thank you so much for your input! Yes indeed we, the founders, are final year students in SMU. Many of us have had teaching experience - for example, I myself have went back to my alma mater (Raffles JC) to teach as a Science relief teacher. My friend Victor had also been a relief teacher, some of us had taught/are still teaching home tution. As such, the education topic is something we are very passionate about.

Many of the points you raised are similar to some of our tutors' feedback and some of the problems we ourselves face.

We do realize that "homework help" forums are aplenty. With apps like Tapatalk, the convenience of photos and push notifications is also easily replicable. What is not easily replicable is the extensive tailor-made filtering and sorting function, as you said. But apart from this, what is our selling point? That's the exact issue me and my team has been thinking about how to solve for months.

Looking deeper at the problem, we realized that what students need in order to learn is not just answers. If all I need is an answer, I can simply take a look at the answer key in the asessment book. Unless of course, I do not have the answer key, or, I am not interested in doing revision, but simply trying to "outsource" my homework to someone else by asking for an answer. In that case, such students won't learn anything. Tutors wouldn't be too happy nor motivated to serve as a "homework outsourcing service" as well.

What if we changed our forum by embedding into the submission flow such that students not only have to post the question, but also mandatorilly put up either the answer or his attempted workings, and ask for someone's help in how to get from the question to the final answer? We realized that when we were students not long ago, that was the exact problem we faced. We had a whole stack of practice questions, and an answer key, and we got stuck at some problem and we had no idea how to get to the answer. Or, we looked through our past papers, and we forgot how we arrived at our answer/the teacher's answers. That is what interested students really need help in - NOT getting the answer itself, but the detailed thinking process on how to get to the answer, and thats where learning happens.

If the mechanics was changed in this way, would you think tutors would be more motivated to actively help students on the forum, since they can be sure that they are really helping students, and not simply being a "homework outsource" service? I would like to hear your opinions on this.

In addition, the social features on the forum like up/down voting will help to positively reinforce good answers and negatively reinforce bad ones. When we implement a proper badges and points system from this, it will mitigate the risk of "wrong" concepts being taught.

At this point though, I would not want to discount the capabilities and credibility of "un-qualified" student answerers. Indeed, the main selling point of Openlectures is that although the contributors are not "qualified" teachers or tutors, they are just as capable to provide good quality video lectures as students because students know the problems that other students face most and can communicate better with them. In addition, the contributors are from the "top JCs" who have achieved mastery in their subjects. Openlectures is a great tool, many of the founders were my ex-school and CCA mates from RJC. They are doing great in the video lectures space, and we are not looking to compete with them in this area. The area we are focusing on is in the "practice and revision" part of learning. In this area, what more can be done by leveraging on technology and social media, to tap on the expertise that these "student helpers" have? Of course, we do want the "star tutors" you mentioned to come on board as well, because they have their own unique style of pedagogy that will bring up the standard of answers. At the same time, by helping students, they are marketing their services and their ability to teach. Really, our vision is to build something that will tap on the capabilites of all these people in one central place, and increase the standard of education in Singapore in an efficient way.

The forum is only one part of our app. Coming up is also a online quizzing tool where users can put up quizzes and students can easily take them on the go using their phones (hence the name SnapQuiz).

I am indeed very interested to discuss this with you further, and I have PMed you with my contact details. :)

Geoffrey

eagle SG

Spent an hour replying your PM. :)

One of my concerns is about content knowledge vs pedagogical content knowledge, which is why I don't really like OpenLectures.

More details in PM :)