LearningJar- Learn Skills Informally

LearningJar- Learn Skills Informally(learningjar.com)

21 points by americandesi333 13 years ago | 19 comments

I would love to get feedback on my education technology startup from the HN community. Its helping people gain employable skills informally and prove what they have learned.

wheelerwj 13 years ago |

I am pretty excited about the possiblity of this. One thing that concerns me though, is that I am in no way interested in tying my facebook to anything I do professionally or really even personally. I hate that contraption and although I might be more convinced to link to my google plus, i really don't want much social media involved with my professional development. So i checked it out but didn't subscribe.

Would gladly give you my email though.

americandesi333 13 years ago | |

We are working on alternate authentication. Would love to get your email address. You can send it to ritu@learningjar.com

eykanal 13 years ago |

At first glance, the site seems to be nothing more than an aggregator of tutorials. If there's a differentiating factor, I'm not seeing it.

americandesi333 13 years ago | |

Thanks for your feedback! We are helping people figure out the skills they need for a new role, connecting them to disparate content via our partnerships and then in the backend integrating with those content providers to track your informal learning in one place so you can use it to apply for jobs.

Will definitely try to get that across better with our landing page.

Terhorst 13 years ago | | |

"We are helping people figure out the skills they need for a new role, connecting them to disparate content via our partnerships and then in the backend integrating with those content providers to track your informal learning in one place so you can use it to apply for jobs."

Hmm, I think that means...

"We are helping people train for a new role..."

"We are helping people train for a new role with high-quality tutorials..."

"We are helping people train for a new role with high-quality tutorials and tracking their learning so they can use it to apply for jobs."

Ohhhhh, in other words... You help people train for a new job and give them something to put on their resume? Awesome! Why didn't you just say so? =)

I suppose people are more likely to say, "Oh.. oh. Hmm. Sounds impressive," if you say it the other way, though.

p_apps 13 years ago |

Another site with facebook login required, no thanks. Why not openid, or other authentication options?

americandesi333 13 years ago | |

We are working on adding other authentication options as we have heard that feedback :) The reason we started with Login with Facebook is because it makes it easy on users. They dont have to upload picture and fill out more forms for LearningJar.

russelluresti 13 years ago |

The idea of pulling existing video or interactive learning resources into one location is interesting, but there are definite improvements needed.

First, people looking to learn things often do not know what is required of them, that's why they're learning. Taking a play from the Khan Academy or Treehouse playbook, offering a suggested order that the user should complete the videos in (from most basic to most advanced) eases the learning process. Otherwise, they won't know exactly where to start.

The other issue is with content curation. Aggregating learning resources from different places adds the problem of an inconsistent instruction style, teaching method, and process. For example, different design resources may teach different design principles. Different development resources may teach different ways of solving a process. To advanced users, knowing multiple ways of doing something, or even alternate/conflicting methods or approaches isn't a bad thing--they can use their existing knowledge to decide which is the best in which situation. But for someone new, being presented with alternate/conflicting approaches will just confuse them.

americandesi333 13 years ago | |

Great insights and feedback. Thank you.

frugalfirbolg 13 years ago |

I found the About page very useful for understanding the use case. I recommend putting the search feature that's on the About page on your home page as well.

Also, why is the ability to Add a role on the home page in the list of example roles? Perhaps if it was called Request it would make more sense.

The Browse section is for individual skills versus roles. It seems that having it centered on Roles makes more sense. At least have the option to browse Roles without following them.

Finally, I found a link to Vimeo for Product Launch Promotion wherein the Learning Jar panel initially appears but then disappears: "How to Earn Customers Without P..." http://vimeo.com/39473593

americandesi333 13 years ago | |

Thanks for your inputs! We fixed the bug and so you should see the LearningJar panel on the side.

engtech 13 years ago |

I need to have some demo of what is going to happen on a site before I use facebook connect or give you any login information in any way.

Requiring a logged in user to use the site should not be the first step.

americandesi333 13 years ago | |

You can go through the website and learn without logging in at the moment. But if you would like to 'Follow' any new roles, we are requiring people to login for that. Having a demo is a great way to summarize the value we bring in. Thanks!

jdeseno 13 years ago |

That's a pretty striking lack of diversity in the call to action on the main page. ^C^P^P.

americandesi333 13 years ago | |

We actually want to and looking to add more people! LearningJar is started by two women and we strongly believe in diversity.

jdeseno 13 years ago | | |

The call out is "what I want to be" and of the 3 choices I'm given, all 3 are white male 25-30 something techies.

I can't understand why you'd want to advertise that so blatantly. I'd recommend something less abstract, like a useful explanation of what your site does etc.

iamkovacs 13 years ago |

A refreshing new player in the education and skill-development field. I'm definitely keeping and eye on this one and it's my first stop for new skills I want to improve.