Chess.com University "Classes"

Hello chess lovers!

Chess.com University has not offered seminars lately due to insufficient interest among the site members during summer time. Traditional Chess.com University seminars will still be offered, but less frequently.

Instead, I am currently designing chess classes.

What do I mean by "classes" ?

I mean something equivalent to a college class:

- Syllabus

- Video Lectures + Written Notes

- Class Textbook (a chess book)

- Assignments with Feedback

- Assessments

I am considering offering thorough courses with written material plus live lectures that are taught over the course of one or two months and cover everything players at certain levels should know.

Unlike in Chess.com University seminars, only 20% of the material would be live and the rest could be completed at the convenience of the student.

The course I am currently designing is a complete beginner to 1000 elo level course.

Before I finish designing such a thorough class, I would like to offer a shorter and less in-depth trial class and get feedback from the students.

Sample Class (1/4 the length of an actual class):

Tactics and Strategy for 1200-1500 rated players.

- Pretest

- 2 video lectures on tactics and two 2 lectures on strategy.

- About 5 written lectures

- 10 hours of other reading/watching homework assigned.

- 10 hours of "doing" homework/assignment based on the topics covered. In this case, solving tactical puzzles, explaining what you believe is the right strategy in certain positions, etc would be part of your homework. Thorough feedback would be provided to all work done.

- Assessment to determine how much you learned!

- Tuition = ?

This class would be spread out over 3 weeks.

The amount of content covered and work required from the students in a "class" would significantly exceed the amount of material covered in even 10 or 15 Chess.com University seminars combined. Additionally, the focus is on students DOING chess instead of watching or reading chess.

Chess classes allow students to simply relax and stop thinking about what they should do to improve at the game. Everything for a certain rating level would be covered in these classes. However, these classes require an enormous time to design and I cannot devote so much time unless if I know there are students interested in such classes.

I believe the online college class approach may be best for students because the class would be thorough with never-ending resources and assignments available to those who want to practice. Additionally, students would have to keep up with the pace of the class. For those of you who truly want to improve at chess but get lazy after a while, classes would be the perfect solution as if you get lazy after paying for a class, you would just waste money and that would wake you up again and force you to study! :-)

As the amount of content/work/learning would be equivalent to the average college class, the tuition would have to be relatively high. Classes may take months to design.

Please give me feedback and any suggestions you have. Whether or not these classes will ever happen will depend on how much interest members have!