Mathematics Learning, Studying and Education Proposal

[Fantini]

Hello everyone. There is currently a proposal for a mathematics education-oriented SE at area 51 in the following link:

Mathematics Learning, Studying, and Education - Area 51 - Stack Exchange

It is very close to going into beta and we need a few more commitments. I decided to advertise this here since I feel many here use MSE and are interested in education in general. I (as others there) would greatly appreciate if you could commit and help us achieve the beta stage.

Best wishes,

Fantini.

 

[ZaidAlyafey]

Could you please explain more ?

 

[Deveno]

As I understand it's a "Ares 51" launch that requires a certain sign-up and answer/response threshold to be crossed before it gets its own SE site.

This will be a "beta launch" where presumably its viability as an ongoing SE site will be evaluated (if response is poor after say a year's time, it will probably shut down).

The focus is on pedagogy from what I can gather, with communication/learning as more minor components.

 

[Fantini]

Sorry for taking long. I'm away from home and internet access is difficult.

Area51 is where new stack exchange sites are created. They go through three phases:

1) Definition: this is where possible questions are formulated in an attempt to determine the scope of the new Q&A site. Answers aren't written, the idea is to see what kind of questions should be (initially) expected and accepted as within the format of the site.

2) Commitment: nobody wants a dead Q&A site, so they need a minimum of people assuming the responsibility for creating questions and answers at the crucial beginning of the site. The idea is that a certain critical mass of users has to be willing to put in the extra work in the beginning to attract attention and maintain continuous support and feed into the site.

3) Beta: finally open to the public, expecting questions and answers and testing whether they receive a good number of experts, interested people in the subject, healthy number of visits, daily users and questions. Where the magic begins to happen.

Deveno is right: sites are usually given a year's time to prove their worth. As for the site's focus, I believe pedagogy, communication and learning are the foundations. In fact, learning is the central one, because if there's no learning going on, nothing's happening. As with others SE, we'll avoid opinion-based, too open-ended questions (and others usually mentioned in the help section), but we're inspired by the philosophy SE which is primarily discussion-based and has no problems.

Best wishes,

Fantini.