Prodeus lets you turn the time you spend learning online into a data driven degree, helping you stay on top of your learning goals and progress in your career.
@thefieldprojects Hey Ethan, I haven't personally tried it on the Brave browser but i do have Adblocker on my Chrome and 'Sign-in through Google" works just fine for me. Let me know if you have trouble with Brave.
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@thefieldprojects@jamesharr Is there any kind of talk about adapting this extension to say FireFox or other browsers by chance or no?
@thefieldprojects@marco_sawyer1 Great question! Yes its our goal to have an update in the next few months that brings the extension functionality to safari and firefox!
👋 Hi ProductHunt! I’d like to send a huge thank you to @chrismessina for hunting Prodeus and for all his invaluable feedback.
I’m excited to announce the launch of Prodeus, a free chrome extension that cleverly tracks the time you spend watching educational videos on Youtube so that you can earn a digital degree no matter your financial situation.
I built Prodeus because I believe that everyone regardless of wealth, status or nationality deserves equal access to higher education, as it’s the single most important factor in upward social mobility. In these past few years we’ve seen a dramatic rise in remote learning as universities continually raise their prices or close their doors from COVID.
📃 How it works
1. Add the extension to your Chrome browser
2. Connect classes from Youtube📺 to the Prodeus library, including the category and difficulty of the class.
3. Prodeus tracks your time spent watching classes and accrues your hours categorically, allowing you to earn degrees in Art & Design, Computer Science, or Business.
4. As you accrue more hours, you build up your expertise and level up your ProDegree.
🎓 What’s a ProDegree?
ProDegrees mirror traditional university degrees. For instance a Bachelors degree requires 3600 class hours, whereas the reflective ProDegree ‘Master’ requires 2000 class hours.
In this first release of our platform we focus on time watched as an indicator of effort. We plan on adding more functionality to future releases that will bring more ways to showcase and validate learning, to offer deeper insights into a learner’s educational journey.
📚 Learner-Led Education
Studies show that learner-led education yields the best outcomes for students. Prodeus helps you measure your self-education process in a Montessori-style approach, letting you decide what and when to learn.
You can choose each individual class you take or you can follow curated pathways from user-generated Courses, collections of classes that can take users on a complete journey through a particular topic, skill or an entire field. As users try and accrue large quantities of time they will be confronted with diverse and unique viewpoints and learn various ways to attack any one skill or task.
🚨 Quality Control
All of the classes on Prodeus require peer reviews which ends up determining the eligibility of that class to provide credit to students. If classes earn below a 3.5 star rating they will not be eligible toprovide credit.
On Our Roadmap
🕹️ Integration with Other Platforms: Soon we will allow our users to track their time on Skillshare, Coursera, Udemy, Lynda.
📦 Project-Based Classes: Course creators will be able to add a project to their youtube class so that students can immediately apply the knowledge they’ve gained in a practical way.
💼 Student Portfolios: As users complete class projects they will be able to build up and showcase a comprehensive body of work.
🗃️ Class Topics: Linking topics and associated skills to classes will provide a new analytical metric to measure your progress and expertise. It also allows us to gamify in new ways like creating skill trees.
Thank you all for the support, and please do share your feedback in the comments.
Best,
James Harr
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You’ve nailed it! I just have one question since this is only available on chrome. As I don’t have a fully fledged desktop to run on only an iPad. Would there be another way for me to use this!
@first_name_last_name1 Thanks for the accolades! Currently it only runs off chrome on the desktop. We plan on adding new browser and mobile supports in the future but as this is a MVP theres limitations on functionality.
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@jamesharr After having acquired all the necessary skills needed in my particular area. How would I receive my degree!
@first_name_last_name1 We're building the functionality now but within a few weeks you'll be able to link your ProDegree with Linkedin and most freelancing platforms. I would love to have the option for people to request a physical degree but thats a ways away.
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@jamesharr besides using YouTube can I use any other video link I come across seeing a course I’m on already!
@first_name_last_name1 Right now Youtube videos are the only ones we track. We are planning on integrating with Skillshare, Udemy, Coursera, Pluralsight, and Teachable within the year so you can track your time anywhere you learn online. But thats a little ways off.
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@jamesharr I want to congratulate you on building this awesome product. It really makes me happy to see how a personal product idea come true, that I had thought of some 2 years back, while I was doing free MOOC courses on ML & AI. It was just a idea on which I was planning to work later. But this really means alot. We as product enthusiast, build products for each other for use. Let me know if I can be of any help on your Prodeous journey. Happy to help and to be in touch. All the very best for Prodeous.
@bhanujeetc Thanks for the support Bhanujeet! If you have any of your classes up on Youtube, I'd love to add some more ML and AI classes to the Prodeus library!
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Sorry I am not a youtube creator but will be able to help in creating new categories and suggest new MOOC courses or video playlists which can add value to your existing list. Thanks!
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Something to consider to add to the FAQ: how hours are accrued.
Does it use the length of the video and log the percentage of the video watched or does the extension keep track of your actual, real time spent watching that video?
@mattholsinger Ill definitely add this to the FAQ page. We don't want to penalize people for learning more quickly by watching at 2x the speed, so it logs based on the time of the video.
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@jamesharr Fantastic; that was one of my first thoughts (playback rates).
Hey all! The increased traffic today has exposed a couple minor issues that we're actively working on. If you experience any bugs please know that they will be fixed promptly.
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@jamesharr Having understood that the developers have found a bug in there algorithm. There is no sign of an update on chrome web store! Having been assured 24-48 hour turn around. It’s been 6 days.
@first_name_last_name1 Akther... The updates have been published to the Chrome store. Please refresh the app and let me know if you are still experiencing the issue.
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@jamesharr No update showing on the Chrome web store.
@first_name_last_name1 Im not sure it'll show up as an update (it will just automatically update it to the latest build) but we deployed the fix so your degree should be working now. Please let me know if the degree issue is solved.
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@jamesharr Developer mode was the issue it was turned off for extensions. Working now.
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?makers Can this be adapted to track any content viewed on YouTube? Thinking you need to look at Apprenticeships that require education providers to evidence Off The Job training (OTJ), this product would be a part of a solution for easier tracking. Happy to talk more but seriously it would save time and effort for all stakeholders.
@martin_rothwell_edu Hey Martin. The product already allows for you to track any content on Youtube. You just have to connect the YT video to the Prodeus library and select a relevant category.
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