“We are embedding the social aspects of studying into an environment that is much closer to students”
Former economics professor Eidan Apelbaum says he was inspired to set up online study business as technology seems to have skipped by the classroom.
Classes are still being taught in the same way he earnt, forty years ago, he told Proactive.
WATCH: Spitball: A social studying platform helping students collaborate and share content
Students, though, spend a lot of time on social applications such as and Snapchat, which have specific characteristics and especially the ability to share content and work collaboratively
Importantly, these networks also recognise a person’s contribution to the system itself.
“What we have created at is all of those features in a study application.
“This means once you get a homework problem you can share it with the rest of the colleagues or your peers and get help on how to resolve the problem”
“We are embedding the social aspects of studying into an environment that is much closer to students.”
He adds two things were apparent once the application was launched.
“A lot of the students hate subscription models in which they have to pay on a monthly basis for the information.”
“They like a points system and the recognition of their contribution it gives but wanted to be able to use it on other platforms and turn it into something valuable.
“What we have done with the 2.0 platform is to convert the points into tokens and in that way we can bring out the real value of their contribution to the network.”
Spitball has also moved away from the subscription model to allow students to pay other students in tokens for their contribution to their problems, therefore creating some akin to an eBay for social information.”
Tokens are cashable and transferable into any fiat money/currency.
Using blockchain to underpin everything, meanwhile, builds trust into the system itself and that is the most important thing you can you need to add in order for financial interactions to occur says Apelbaum.
“When we launched the homework help feature we reached over half a million unique visits that month.”
Spitball is a global service he says.
“What’s interesting is that people are being asked questions from the US, from Europe from everywhere and people from Asia, Pakistan, India are helping them study.”
Features such as micro-tutoring are gradually being introduced to enable students to get online with somebody to help on a specific topic
Other things under development include sales of textbooks, flashcards and localisation of information into regional languages.
Spitball earns its revenue from a 3% commission on transactions on the system.
Apelbaum adds that marketing to students is not an easy task and traditional advertising cuts little ice with ‘Generation Zero’.
“To advertise you really need to work with boots on the ground having…
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