Thanks for the feedback! Those are some great points, and something that we've been discussing for some time.
We're experimenting with a couple marketing strategies. Our primary strategy has been to focus on students for a grassroots adoption, hence the silly marketing copy and the koala logo. We've been handing out t-shirts and posting funny flyers on various college campuses.
In addition, we are talking to professors to encourage them to officially adopt Tabule in their classrooms. The teachers that are currently using Tabule are seeing a large increase in student participation, since they feel more comfortable asking questions. It also provides the students with an official source for due dates that's collaboratively maintained, so it should always be correct.
The biggest problem is, like you mentioned, the students that are most likely to be organized and post content to Tabule are also the ones that have less of a need for a system like ours. That's why we are starting to lean towards focusing more on marketing directly to instructors, although that is a much harder market to reach and to convince to try new technology.
Having said that, I think you would still find Tabule useful over organizing assignments yourself in Google Calendar because if an assignment is announced later in the semester and isn't on the initial syllabus or if a due date changes, you're more likely to have the correct information if you and your classmates are using Tabule.
We're experimenting with a couple marketing strategies. Our primary strategy has been to focus on students for a grassroots adoption, hence the silly marketing copy and the koala logo. We've been handing out t-shirts and posting funny flyers on various college campuses.
In addition, we are talking to professors to encourage them to officially adopt Tabule in their classrooms. The teachers that are currently using Tabule are seeing a large increase in student participation, since they feel more comfortable asking questions. It also provides the students with an official source for due dates that's collaboratively maintained, so it should always be correct.
The biggest problem is, like you mentioned, the students that are most likely to be organized and post content to Tabule are also the ones that have less of a need for a system like ours. That's why we are starting to lean towards focusing more on marketing directly to instructors, although that is a much harder market to reach and to convince to try new technology.
Having said that, I think you would still find Tabule useful over organizing assignments yourself in Google Calendar because if an assignment is announced later in the semester and isn't on the initial syllabus or if a due date changes, you're more likely to have the correct information if you and your classmates are using Tabule.