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.
@aj002 Thats definitely a major part of what made us build this product. Youtube has such a wealth of information and it just needs to be tapped into and organized.
👋 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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I love this idea. Not only is the concept of tracking something many of us are already doing really amazing, it is also a way to encourage further and deeper dives into topics. The extension is sleek and really easy to use. I love that in addition to being a tracker (with some great ways to look at progress) Prodeus also helps you find other videos to progress your learning - I think this idea could bring learning to people who never thought it was their thing while also serving those of us with highly specified degrees to broaden our understanding and having something to show for it! I'm excited to see where this goes and am happy to be using it :D Amazing concept!
@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!
@shimmmaz Great Idea Shimon! We included a feature like this on an earlier iteration of this product. I will definitely make sure to add the functionality to one of our next updates!!
@jamesharr Sure! Let me know, because, for me, it would be a game changer. If you can connect people taking notes to youtube and be able to bounce off ideas from one another, then that would really harness the power of learning out there on the internet with a browser extension. Keep me in the loop if you can. And congrats again on a great product!
@jamesharr By the way, if Prodeus was made during lockdown, you may want to consider to add it to https://lockdownshowcase.com/ we would love to have Prodeus featured there.
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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Does this involve a certificate from YouTube as well...?
@harsh_gelda
Hey Harsh, thanks for the question. The certificate is actually offered through Prodeus, but its related to each students time spent on youtube learning about their field of interest.
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