Participate

We need your help!

This site is still in beta and we are trying to build up the database and add new features and functionality but we can't do it without you.  If you want to participate in helping us improve this site, check out what help we need below and send us a message.  We'd love to hear from you. Thanks for coming along with us on this journey! 

 

Where we need your help

  1. Help out financially - Like everyone else, we need money to keep this going.  Resourcium is a completely free database for searching, organizing, and sharing fantastic educational materials. We put a ton of time, effort, and dedication into this project so if you’d like to help financially support our endeavor - we’d be more than grateful : )

     

  2. Help improve the resource taxonomy - You can find our proposed resource taxonomy on the Taxonomy page. The goal is that the taxonomic scheme is set up in a way that people can find exactly what they're looking for by searching for keywords and applying the appropriate filters.  For example, you could search for "PID Control" and filter for "beginner" "videos" that cover how PID control is "applied" to real problems in industry. In order for this to be a valuable feature, we need to set up a labeling scheme that covers the important dimensions (Topics, Scope, Experience, Type, etc) and discretizes those dimensions into a useful number of bins.  We need help reviewing the proposed scheme and hearing from you on any recommendations you have to improve it.

     

  3. Help us find great resources - Once we've settled on a good taxonomy, we need to build up the database of resources in earnest.  We can't create interesting and helpful journeys if the raw building materials don't exist on the site.  If you would like to help us find great resources, there are two ways to submit your suggestions to us:

    1. One at a time - You can send a link to a great resource through the contact page.  However, we might get overwhelmed trying to keep up with this method, so if you have a lot of suggestions it's better to send them as a batch.

    2. Batch load - You can send us a note requesting a CSV file with all of the appropriate data fields for each resource. Send it back after you've filled it out and we can load them all at once. 

     

  4. What is a helpful resource - One of the features we're working on is a quantitative representation of resource "helpfulness".  This is similar to the number of times a tweet has been "liked" or a Reddit post has been "upvoted".  In our case, we want to develop an algorithm that will rank resources in a way that the most helpful will rise to the top of the list.  We're not sure yet how to do this.  Are resources helpful if a lot of people "like" them? Or if a resource is used in more journeys? Or if a resource is newer?  Or a combination of those and other metrics?  This is where we could use your help. Please let us know how you would quantify helpfulness or if you know of a website that already does a pretty good job that Resourcium can mimic.

     

  5. What other features would you like to see - We're always on the lookout for new features that will make Resourcium the best place to find, organize, and share great educational resources.  If you have any suggestions, please reach out to us!

 

Features we're currently working on

 

 

  1. User accounts - Now that users can create their own accounts we are able to add more interactive functionality to the site.  Ultimately, we'd like to get closer to a Wikipedia or Reddit-style system where users can add and modify data so that it can grow quickly and provide more educational value.  Our next step with accounts, however, is to allow users to

    1. Request to become moderators to help add and curate resources, topics, and journeys

     

  2. Settle on resource taxonomy - The taxonomy (or the way we're classifying and labeling resources) is very basic at the moment.  Before we really start filling out the database we want to make sure the resource labels are sufficient and useful.  This is where you can help us!  Check out what feedback we're looking for in the "Where we need your help" section above.

     

  3. Improve filters - At the moment, we only have filters for resources.  These allow you to filter on type, scope, and experience level. We're working on improving the filter to include all of the metadata and expand the filters to include journeys.

     

  4. Improve sorting - The current release allows for sorting resources by submitted data and helpfulness value. We're working on adding sorting to the journeys as well.  

     

  5. Helpfulness values - We're looking into ways of quantifying how helpful a resource or a journey is.  This will give a value that can be sorted in a list so that the "most helpful" resources and journeys float to the top and are easier to find.  In the next release, helpfulness will be a function of the number of times a users saves that resource and the number of times it appears in journey.  If you have suggestions for this algorithm, please check out the "Where we need your help" section above. 

     

  6. Report Issues - Before we allow users to make changes themselves we need a way to easily allow people to report issues with the resources in the database.  This includes things like broken links, mislabeled data, inappropriate material, and incomplete descriptions.