A number of us on the community form have been discussing a problem. Ben Tristem has an awesome looking Kickstarter for a new RPG course. Many of us want to help with that, but are either lifetime members, and thus will automatically get the course, or are already enrolled in his courses and want to do a bit more than the lowest level, but in essence would have a coupon code that would never be redeemed. The question then occurs, what do we do with that coupon code? The son of my cousin did the following in Minecraft, and I thought, hey, he would be a great person to give the Blender course to, and allow him to do something that has more real-world use, but I don’t know anyone personally that I would want to give the RPG course to. What then was I to do?

I noticed that another user on the form had a similar desire, Rob Meade. Knowing there was someone else out there with the same desire, I set out to see if there was anyone else interested. It turns out that with the relatively limited exposure of the forum, we were able to come up with 4 people who would be willing to donate a course. We also discussed the option of being a mentor to the students that participate in the program. This could allow for a larger impact to the person, and generally speaking give a way to “Pay it forward”.

The question I present to you is, do you think this is a good program to put forward? Are those interested in donating Ben’s courses to people in need? What kinds of things should we set on those who receive said coupon codes?

My personal thought is that the person who receives the code should be someone who really wants to learn the subject matter, and has something that limits them (Age, Money, etc). They ideally should be someone who is interested in the course, but doesn’t have a lot of knowledge of the material of the course. Giving such a person the course could potentially change lives in a positive way. This could be done by submitting an image and a brief essay of why they think we should give them the course for free. I’ve put two draft Google Forms for consideration for what the requests might look like, this one for submitting coupons, and this one for asking for them. What do you think?

About the Author:

Ben Pearson is the author of the Amateur Radio and other technology blog KD7UIY  and developer of Games and Apps at Google Play pearsonartphoto, where he plans to publish some of the games created by inspiration of gamedev.tv. He is currently working on a Sea Trading game, which you can subscribe to updates at his Google Group. He has been a programmer since a young age, although only recently is learning programming with game engines. He has completed the the Complete Unity Developer Course and the Procedural Generation courses, and is working through the Complete Blender Developer Course and Unity Game Physics courses. He is hoping to soon start Unreal Courses soon. Follow him on Twitter @KD7UIY.