Interaction with Treehouse Teachers

Hi all,

This is something I've been thinking about for a little while.

I read an article a few weeks ago about the conception of Treehouse about it's dream to provide a cheap alternative to college education and maybe even remove the need one day when you can have an education online much the same way that Treehouse provides.

This is a dream I very much believe in and support. I love learning and I do miss my college experience. Sometimes I feel like Treehouse gives some of this experience back.

I have no doubt that the Treehouse teachers are absolute experts in their field and they give the very best knowledge of the topics at hand and in the more technical videos they explain everything we need to know as they do their code walkthroughs.

If we want to continue to use the College comparison, the videos are like our college lectures. The code challenges remind me of practical lessons and/or college seminars. The marking systems are all well and good but there is one thing I tthink is missing.

If there's one thing I think I miss about Treehouse its access to a Treehouse teacher, for; for want of a better expression, one to one support.

Now, I'm well aware that Treehouse is not the same as the regular college/university environment and I'm not expecting Treehouse to replicate this kind of support for all the hundreds of thousands of Treehouse Students the website already looks after.

I'm also aware that Treehouse teachers are available to us either via the forums or Twitter whenever they can to help us when possible.

What's prompting this really is my continued attempts to understand the Interactive Web Pages with Javascript Course. I want to get to grips with this course before I move on and I've come to a point where I feel like I have so many questions too numerous to put into one post and I'm not picking things up as quickly as I'd like.

What I'm suggesting is a couple of things really.

1 A dedicated forum area for each Treehouse teacher where Students can post questions for any of the course. Maybe even one for each available course. I don't know if this is possible or feasible but it might be a good place for students to connect with teachers for questions and points that they want explaining.

2 A messaging system via the Treehouse website. I know this would radically change Treehouse to how we're all used to it at the moment, but I think it's something the website misses. The ability to socially interact. Form study groups or something similar on the site, add each other as "class members" or "study pals" so we can offer tips between students, teachers and the like.

Or we could just bounce ideas off each other like this forum is designed to do. I just thought I'd put the ideas out there.

Am I rocking the boat?