Bring back the course forums

Community-Created Courses Learning Central
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Memrise, in all sorts of ways, has had quite an effect on my life.

It’s a great concept, and there’s a lot you can do with it (website - I’ve never used the app.).

I am very fond/?protective of it (with a large hint of exasperation!), but there is so much potential that isn’t exploited and, as a creator of quality courses in a ‘niche’ language, I would really like more promotion of good courses and interaction with other learners.

A lot of people didn’t find the old course forums, so stumbling over here is even less likely.

:sunflower:

Would be a great idea - maybe they already do? Although my imaginations of what goes on at Memrise meetings isn’t always flattering …

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Hi @leggi

as a creator of quality courses in a ‘niche’ language,

I was interested to look at your courses but using the obvious link

http://www.memrise.com/user/leggi/courses/teaching/

is bringing up a 404 error message.

PS It now works.

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opa! In an attempt to get the attention of the handful of Memrise users that might be interested, I changed my user name a couple of days ago: http://www.memrise.com/user/leggi._new_course_out.../courses/teaching/

There’s nothing ‘wow’ about my courses, but they are mistake free and well designed IMO, :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: Individually created entries, teaching basic grammar as well as a lot of vocabulary, with synonyms/confusables added as ‘have another go’ alternatives, and attributes to indicate exactly what is being asked for. I’ve used the courses for at least a couple of years, so they are well tested for long term use too.

I don’t have audio (only one BG course does as far as I’m aware - which should be the one displayed in the top box) but I do have pronunciations, showing vowel stress and when voiced consonants become voiceless, that flash up after a test. (at least on the courses where I’ve sat and copied the pronunciations originally added as plain attributes before I knew about the feature. )

(It’s a shame multi-media levels aren’t shown on the app. I think mine give some good explanations of the basic grammar of Bulgarian.)

I’m currently converting some of my 'type the Bulgaria’n courses into ‘read the Bulgarian’. I’m slowly working on another course to help with sentence structure and phrases, and one using pronouns (32 long forms, ?7 short forms off the top of my head) and prepositions - but they will be a while!

:sunflower:

I do wonder how many people/potential customers! try a couple of courses on Memrise, get put off by the quality and give up. With no clues for new users about how to find good courses, they try a couple near the top and that’s it. Only the dedicated, or those in the know, are going to load pages of courses looking for the gems.

I’m frustrated that I’ll publish courses now and they’ll languish at the end of a very long list. And Bulgarian’s not even a popular subject - decent courses must be all over the place but how’s one to know? Although Memrise’s focus appears to have shifted to the app. and to official courses, there is still a lot of excellent user created courses that they should make easy to find IMO for an increase in user retention.

bigger user base = more potential pro customers.

And back on point - I doubt the course forums will return, but I do hope a course’s home page is redesigned to include the ability to link to a forum here - something obvious!

It would be good to be able to invite Memrise users to the forum too.

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Thanks @leggi

Interestingly your name here hasn’t changed automatically or forced you to log in again with your new name.

Also I am still following you (automatically) and all your “leggi” courses have your new creator name. (I thought I recognised your name and was expecting your ‘goat’ photo.)

Finally, many of the points you mention above we agree with and have been listed elsewhere eg how do users find a good course (and by one of us rather than the MemRise team) as the number of ‘users’ is no proof of quality - hence the request for a “star” appreciation of great courses.

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@DW7 have you a link to the star appreciation request thread? A simple marker on tested and recommended courses could make quite a difference from sorting the wheat from the chaff - depending on the criteria for being able to award a ‘‘star’’. Imagine - courses listed by most recent, most recommended, size and popularity! :smiling_imp:

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I’ve done extensive keyword searching and only found this but there was another :

It may be this post and subsequently, I think:

There was reference to “star”, “quality” and “similar to google play” but I can’t find it now.

Also see item 6 in the same thread:

A rating of the different elements, and of the total course from 0 to 5 stars

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5 posts were merged into an existing topic: [Course Forum] Sungkyunkwan University words level 3 and 4 by SandhyaKordelaar

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@DW7 cheers for the links. I like the idea of a simple mark/star on courses users have recommended (after someone’s completed enough of it to judge!), I’ll check those threads when I’ve got time. :sunflower:

As for the course forums - they were something that a learner could use to assess the quality of a course (multiple error reports and no response = not good!). Now that the forums have gone it seems even more important to improve a users experience by making it easy to find good courses.

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@leggi, you can add this one to your list of ‘bedtime reading’ [Site Feedback] Better visibility for new courses, issues with the app, accountability for absentee course creators -- with possible solutions to each.

As you know, the topic of grading the quality of courses has rumbled on for a long time and we are no nearer getting a solution - of any kind, let alone one that the majority of users would be happy with. I think that’s a major failing. But, while Memrise continue to concentrate on developing and pushing their own courses, I don’t suppose there will be much appetite within ‘Memrise Towers’ for spending any time on this.

Anyway, this isn’t the right forum topic to be renewing this debate. Maybe, when I have some time on my hands, I’ll kick it off again in a thread of its own. :pensive:

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I’ve been doing an Italian course and the course creator has not created a forum for the course so I don’t know how to contact him. There are a few mistakes in the course and also many synonyms that are not resolved. I don’t know if he is still maintaining the course and don’t know how to contact him. I’d love to be added as a contributor if he is no longer interested. Do any have any suggestions about this?

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@wynrich, call @Lien for help. She’ll answer

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There are a lot of Italian courses. You should specify and provide a link to the specific Italian course you are referring to, so that Lien can contact them for you.

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Thank you Hydroptere and xvg11. This is the course:

http://www.memrise.com/course/64852/duolingo-3/

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@JeffHammerbacher doesn’t seem to be active here.

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the old forums were good because you didn’t have to make a log-in to ask/answer a question, but this forum isn’t hard to make a login and I prefer the layout

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Yep. I also miss the old forums. It was a great way to communicate with my students in the courses that I create

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These new forums are awful. Sometimes you look at a change and think… how the heck did this seem like a good idea? I haven’t found a single forum to go with the courses that I liked to study.

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I agree this can happen, but to be fair, in the past just because there was a Forum, didn’t mean the Creator was active and was still supporting the course.

But it did mean that if a Contributor was supporting the course s/he was also notified.

We now need to hunt for the Creator and then ask the MemRise team to contact them (if they are not present), with a view to us supporting the course - if that is what we want to do.

As a Contributor to many courses, I am adding my ‘name’ to the long description so people know they can contact me via a Forum or a PM (and there is a quick link on my profile [on the learning pages] should people not know their way around here.)

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I normally found that the creators of the course rarely looked at the old forums :disappointed:

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There is certainly more of a community feel about this area, but if I remember correctly, there were two ‘community’ areas under the old system, it’s just that Course Forums were automatically set up with all new courses - which was great at the initial stage while the Creator was active and keen to improve the course.

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