Help Forum now supports messaging and video calls, which can be posted as answers on Help Forum. Only moderators can initiate video calls w/ students. If you are a mentor or experienced student and want to become a moderator, email me at richardrpanzer@gmail.com
Since pushing the site on 6/12/15, we've had 133 users sign up and 118 questions asked. Questions previously posted are helping new students as they venture through checkpoints in the roadmap.
Even with the existing momentum and the acitivity in the Facebook Hacker Group and Student Slack Groups, students still want more. Students banded together to express their desire to bring back Office Hours, in a large post in the Hacker group. Our core value proposition as Bloc is our 1 on 1 mentor experience, but between mentor sessions, students still struggle, whether it's not understanding a topic, an assignment, or getting stuck on a bug for several hours in between those sessions.
We built messaging into Help Forum. There are many steps involved with understanding the student's question and crafting a post-worth response. Sometimes you want to clarify for more detail. Messaging is a great place for this. This adds fluidity and speed to the Q&A forum. How is it different from Facebook or Slack? All of this is archived by the question. Each question has a group chat, where all members can view and participate in it. Of course there are comments for this too, but messaging was also built as a way too cordinate the next feature - video calls.
A picture is a thousand words, and a video is a thousand images. Square that, because it's a two way video call =p. Before Help Forum, I used to help my students via chat. But sometimes with chat, only so much of a picture can be painted. With a video call, everything becomes immediately clear for the student and the mentor, and much more is communicated. Not only the answer, but also the approach to solving the problem, explanations behind principles, and additional relevant quesitons from the student. Anything that couldn't be figured out or would take too long via chat, takes a fraction of the time on a video call with a lot more gained. Video Calls are now are part of Help Forum.
In Help Forum, moderators (mentors and experienced students who email me), will message the student in the question based group chat to immediately coordinate the call w/ the student. When a moderator and student are ready, the moderator will press the "Create Hangout on Air" button. Google Hangouts will open up and an invite to join is sent in the chat.
Because the video call is a Google Hangout on Air, the video call will be recorded, and the moderator will be able to post the video as an answer on the Help Forum. Therefore, other students will be able to see not just the answer, but the process debugging and explanation of the principles behind the answer. This is a solution that provides a superior 1-on-1 experience for the student, on demand, in a fraction of the time, and because it's archived, other students will benefit too.
Nope. It's already there, just post a question as you normally would, and see the magic happen.
If you're a student. Ask your mentor if they're a moderator on Help Forum. If you're a mentor or experienced student, think about becoming a moderator.
You can become a moderator if you consider yourself an experience student or you are mentor. Just email me at richardrpanzer@gmail.com. Only moderators can start video calls with students.
That's fine, just clarify the problem over comment, chat, and post an answer to the question just as you normally would.
Because each chat is a group based chat, all moderators can see if a student is already being assisted.
Yep! Multiple students and moderators can join in on a hangout and participate, ask questions, and provide extra suggestions.
As mentors, we are hired to be able to solve problems on the fly. Sometimes we may not the answer to a problem immediately, but the ability to debug is just as important for students to learn. So, in that respect, no video is too long. Granted, if a call is 30 minutes long, I would say still post, but have either you or the student post a summary in addition to the video.
You can sign up here