Idea for LessWrong: Video Tutoring

Awesome idea. I signed up for both roles (Though I can't teach anything til August). I predict the most in demand subject will be machine learning. After that I would guess stats/probability. I wonder how easy it will be to coordinate ~5 learners to agree to one "class". I would guess this project will wind up having 2-3 people in some "classes", assuming the tutors agree. But perhaps I am wrong. Its hard to get people to agree to both a subject and a difficulty level.

Note: Everything I write below about pedagogy is anecdotal, and I don't have much experience outside of being a student.

This is a really cool idea! I think it's a good way of bringing people in the community closer together!

That being said, I'm worried the classes might not turn out to be very good because good teaching seems generally pretty hard. (Which isn't to say that I don't think LWers can't rise to the challenge, just that this means my priors on "Video tutoring will turn out well" are low.) (Or perhaps I just didn't have many good teachers).

I think personalization could be a very important niche role we could exploit here to make things better. So rather than the Teacher spending time going over the subject, they could chat individually with Learners to assess where they are at, suggest materials, and then follow up after each iteration. (Think something like the flipped classroom model where we're counting on people to be self-motivated learners, and these video sessions would be more for supplementing self-studying.)

Video chat probably isn't good enough by itself for many topics. For programming, screen-sharing software would be helpful. For mathematics, some kind of online whiteboard would help. Is there anything else we need? Do any of you know of good resources? Free options that don't require registration are preferable.

I'm surprised that there aren't any active YouTube channels with LessWrong-esque content, or at least none that I am aware of.

I propose that Learners individually reach out to Teachers, and set up meetings.

Consider that it may make sense for you to act as a Teacher, even if you don't have a super strong grasp of the topic.

Why that way instead of the reverse? True, the learners probably have the greater motivation. But, the learners have a better idea of what they want to learn than the teachers have of what they can teach, especially if we're accepting teachers without a super strong grasp of their topics. Thus, I think it would make more sense for the learners to post in detail what they want, and the teachers to look over all of that and make the offer on whatever topics they can help with, even if only a little.

We could certainly do both, but then I worry that each will hope the other initiates. The cure for this is if one individual plays matchmaker to get things started. Due to the bystander effect, I'll name adamzerner as the obvious choice for the role, but you could delegate then abdicate if someone else is willing.

I pinned http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/p69/idea_for_lesswrong_video_tutoring/ to #productivity on the LessWrongers Slack group.

A chat room could also work better than individual emails. But everybody has to be on the same channel and check it regularly. I don't even have an invite yet (I just asked Elo for one). Is everyone else on?

Maybe relevant (somewhat personal) - I'm in the market for math tutoring. Context: I'm not really a beginner, in fact an ML practitioner with mostly software background. I learned enough math to have useful intuitions but really want to level up in understanding/solidifying probability/linear algebra/optimization and maybe some MIRI-relevant math (though less practically relevant). Ideally I'd want to work with someone who can probe my current knowledge and help me lay out a plan and fill gaps, mostly independently (assign homework) and work through sticky problems over video.

Willing to pay fairly for the service depending on quality, potentially for a long time. PM if capable+interested.

I think this is a great idea, likely to have positive value for participants. So going Hamming questions on this, I think two things are important.

1. I think the most likely way this is going to "fail", is that a few people will get together, then meet about three times, and then it will just peter out, as participants are not committed enough to participate long-term. Right now, I don't think I personally would participate without there being a good reason to believe participants will keep showing up, like financial incentives, for example.
2. Don't worry too much about doing it the Right Way from the beginning. If you get some people together, just start with the first best thing that comes to mind and iterate.

I think this is a great idea, mostly as a motivator for people to come with classes.

For example, I have been thinking of doing a workshop on mental math or OKCupid for a while, but the logistics of doing it IRL for more than 2-3 people seem overwhelming. But this gave me the idea that I can plan to do it online, which actually has a lot of benefits, and I can advertise and see who signs up on LW.

For people interested in learning Russian, I can't "teach" teach it, but I can help you practice it.

A question for people asking for machine learning tutors: have you tried just reading through OpenAI blog posts and running the code examples they embed or link? Or going through the TensorFlow tutorials?

I agree - great idea!