Kosmos – Homework Help Chat

Hacker News

Share card

Kosmos – Homework Help Chat

Hi all, We're committed to making it easier for students to get help with all school-related things (mostly homework). We launched a text-based tutoring service in January (called Humbot). We've learned some things since then: - Tutoring is not something students want; it's mostly something their parents want - Therefore, it's a shitty experience for students - The need for tutoring is a consequence of students falling behind in school (part of which is caused by not being able to do homework). We want to fix the cause, not the symptom. - We thought homework help is also tutoring (which it is in theory), but students don't see it as tutoring - They need instant help when they are stuck with homework - Paying is usually not an option (even small amounts) for teens - Teens don't really care if an MIT grad tutor helps them or some random, as long as it's instant and free (and makes sense to them) - The interaction of a chat is a game-changer compared to "static" homework help forums, where there are almost never follow-up questions because it's just not dynamic enough With these learnings, we launched our new app, Kosmos last week. It's available for iPhone and Android. It kind of feels like a Slack for homework help, however currently it's more a chat-based Reddit (with only one community and but subject-related channels). Or, if you're feeling nostalgic: A chat website with chatrooms :-) Since launching last week, we already have ~600 downloads and ~60 daily active users. It's pretty basic feature-wise, but we wanted to launch quickly. We're adding more features every week, and in general, our goal is to make it easier to post and discuss questions. Obvious things are a whiteboard feature and a graphing tool. However, threading, etc. will also be important. Check it out: https://kosmosapp.io Curious to know what you think.