Course Hero Opens Gamified Course-Creation Tools to the Public
Course Hero, which has historically sought out experts and existing material to build its own online game-like courses, will now allow anyone to submit a course. After being checked for quality, they’ll be published online.
Unlike new education efforts like Coursera, said Course Hero CEO Andrew Gauer, “Our focus is not working long-term with academic institutions but filling the gap between college and the workplace.”
Redwood City, Calif.-based Course Hero has more than 40,000 paid subscribers, who receive additional materials and tutoring. It receives about 2.5 million visits per month, though fewer in summer. With some new additions launching today, it has 40 total courses.
The gamification features of Course Hero are fairly basic, with achievement badges for accomplishments like logging on during the weekend, uploading documents and completing classes. There’s a sitewide leaderboard, but not much in the way of a community or interaction between students.
Other course-creation tools include Udemy, which is more focused on video; and Apple’s iTunes U, which just opened to all teachers.
Course Hero is backed by SV Angel, Maveron and angels including Facebook’s Gokul Rajaram.