Some idea for math.se to propel some discussion.

Question

I am only a beginner in math.se, (and to math as well in some technical ways, not in terms of enthusiasm though) in my view i feel that math.se has a very good amount of wealth of knowledge in math and is rapidly increasing. I think in my opinion, at some point in future it could give math class room courses a run for their money if not atleast act as a very good supplementary material there by helping students at all levels from around the globe in a huge way.

In this view my suggestion or idea is to create some sort of structure to the collection of Q&A's in some sense (something much more than tagging), the structure itself could be subject or topic dependent, which can transform the Q&A collection into some sort of a Virtual Tutor or a sort of a classroom.

I don't know better examples but would like to know if there are any examples or such ideas .

Answer 1

This is certainly a laudable goal; I would absolutely say the #1 purpose of any Stack Exchange site is learning within an expert community on a specific topic.

However, I think the goals you outline are more akin to something like

http://www.khanacademy.org/

We do learning through directed Q&A but we don't provide any overaching educational structure beyond what is encapsulated in tags.

That, I think, is outside our scope.

But all the Q&A here is licensed cc-by-sa 3.0, provided through bimonthly data dumps as well as our API, and can be freely remixed and reused by the community for any educational purpose.

Answer 2

Like Jeff, I think the goal is laudable; and since any possible implementation will have to be done by the SE team (if you want to keep it on this domain), you've already gotten your answer there.

On the flip side, even had Jeff agreed to consider to implement your suggestion, I think we do not have nearly enough questions pedagogically organized for your suggestion (yet). Furthermore, who will be the ones to mind this structure? If you want someone dedicated to monitoring and classifying questions, you will need someone on a paid staff and not community moderators (who are busy enough as they are). And of course you cannot count on the question askers to correctly 'tag' everything, especially since those in the learning process tend not to have the proper bird's-eye view of the subject for pedagogical planning. So you are down to the "community" as a whole. Considering the speed at which our latest community project is growing, I am a bit pessimistic that your suggestions will (as a matter of practicality) fly.