Until 12 July, if you did a mouseover on the ‘number of people learning’ box relating to a course (either in the Profile area or in the course list area) where the course has more than 1k learners, it would display the actual number of learners (for example “5k” might display “5396”). Since 12 July, that no longer happens.
Could one of the team please say if this is the result of: a bug; an unintended consequence of a change; or the intended removal of what was a useful feature for tracking the growth of popular courses?
You mean in the past the little box would have said “2173 people are learning the course” (or whatever other number between 2165 and 2174 is the right number). If it were my course, I’d like to know the real, precise number. Weird that it is gone.
Yes, up until 12 Jul, it did. That’s why I’m trying to find out if it’s an intended or unintended change.
It was a helpful feature for monitoring how many people were joining the courses I am responsible for, where the total number of learners is more than 1k, I check the numbers at regular intervals and found it a useful tool for judging if the course remained relevant, was of interest to people and if maybe the content needed refreshing.
Of course, it’s not much of an issue where the total is less than 10k because it still displays to the nearest 10 (as in your example). However, one of the courses I am responsible for had 10997 learners (as at 11 Jul) but, since the change, displays “11k” with the mouseover.
If it’s an intentional change by Memrise, for courses with more than 10k learners, it’s going to take a long time for the display to change (if rounding to the nearest thousand is to be the convention) and monitoring then becomes pointless!
Although I understand their reason for doing it, Memrise’s decision to remove community created courses from the course list on the app versions has already led to a significant drop in new learners joining these courses.
That is simply sad! People join your courses simply because they are so helpful to them. I know, because I joined once a course created by somebody else and it was a life safer for me.
I can understand a valid reason for Memrise to hide user created from the search in the app - there are many abandoned courses, some looking good at first glance, just to find out that they are useless. If that happens too much, people stop using the app - that is not in Memrise’s interest. But we could easily give batches to courses that have proven to be good.
For example, a course AND with more than 1k leaners, AND leaners joining every week (who actually continue to study, with lets say at least 10,000 points each), AND regular contribuation/moderation, AND active course forum. But I am afraid… it’s not going to happen.
I’d completely understand that they put their own courses on top, but is hiding ours really neccessary?
BTW: I thought they didn’t do much development on the website anymore, but apparently there is development, otherwise it wouldn’t change. Hmmm…
