Classes in SL

Persephone, I was just thinking the same thing yesterday. That at a university, the class has to "make" in order for it to be taught... it has to have a prerequisite number of students for the instructor to hold it and get paid.

I guess I, too, am going against the grain here. (So, what's new?) I don't believe the Lindens should pay us for classes in which only a few people attend. Yes, we took the time to hold the class and yes, we prepared it. However...maybe something is wrong with how we advertised it? or made it sound worth going to? or maybe there is a glut of that type of class out there? or... lots of things. I think we need to take more responsibility for our product. If a builder spends days twinking a monstrous high prim house and no one buys it because of the number of prims or the size, does LL pay him to subsidize it? No. In part, the builder built the house because of an enjoyment of building and creating. It is what he does. So, if he does not build a purchaseable house, that is his doing. If you educate on SL, it is because that is something you like...it is your product. But you, not the Lindens, should be responsible for finding out what will bring students to your class.

HOWEVER, I do feel that there should be Linden support for educational events and, personally, I think $500 is a good amount with another $500 if there is an approved contest involved. Potentially, you could have several events every day of the week, if you so choose. If you chose to take that route, you could do well. (as long as you taught well and people still came back) There are people on SL who teach daily classes or hold daily educational events.

I have been okeyed for some classes and discussions for many months but have not held them yet. That is my fault. Other aspects of SL have gotten in my way and I am working on my props and needed to learn PhotoShop to do it (and my goodness has my brain not been in synch with that!). Most of all, I have not committed to scheduling a time that I might not make. Again, my fault. I could always cancel it if I couldn't do it.

I think we should spend more time thinking about:
1. How to get the word out there that there are classes to be had. One method will be cleaning up the Events calendar. Another that I have suggested, is to have some way of letting newcomers know of hotspots for teaching or daily educational events (classes, discussions, competitions).
2. Finding ways to make going to a class interesting and one to go to.
3. Learning new ways to advertise the classes (Again, the revised events calendar will help).
4. As the commercial says... Just do it!!!

There are several people who can be tapped for helping you with doing the actual teaching if not teaching is because of uncertainty on how to go about it. I know that curriculums are being developed to help teachers teach in SL. As a matter of fact, after I get done with this... I will put in an IM to one of them and see if he will put it on the front burner.

The last several classes I held attracted 4 people each. The classes were very productive as I was able to work with the newbies one on one. I don't care if LL pays me the $2us or not. It's a joke anyways. I mean think about it, if this were RL it would be illegal to work for less than minimum wage. So lets get this straight, it's not pay, it's a tiny incentive to do what LL would otherwise have to do themselves.

If a newbie quits before the first week is over LL loses a customer. If they stay LL wins. If LL wins we all win.

So the question LL wants to answer is.. How do we keep people past the first week?

The answer is simple.. Give them fun things to do..... and make using SL easy.

The first few days in SL can be so much fun, or a nightmare. It all depends on who you meet (if anyone) and where you go.

LL sees this need as was evident by the new greeter program.

Paying people $2us to be avaliable for one hour, regardless of how many people show up is reasonable. If we paid like a university ( hundreds of dollars for an hour class) pays I could understand a minimum attendence requirement to cover the costs.

Remember, LL doesn't pay instructors real money, they create this new money out of thin air. So don't assume LL takes money out of their pocket to fund this.

We pay property taxes (mostly education funds) because it benefits us all, even if we have no children. That's a whole other topic though.

Summary:
1. Keeping newbies in SL benefits LL and everyone who loves SL.
2. Make learning easy and fun and they will stay.
3. $500L = $2us.. not real pay, just an incentive. LL creates money from thin air.
4. Pay instuctors so LL and everyone within SL wins.

More of my opinions, I'm full of them lol

Yes I would love to see more classes, there were lots when I was first in SecondLife and now there arent hardly any.

I would like to see classes on makeing clothes, photoshop and makeing shoes glorious shoes!=p Prim shoes that is I would PAY to have this class. Why dont Lindens do that, for small fee paid in advance say a pre-registration fee $25L cause the new folks would probably be really interested in the class the most and dont want to charge them beyond there small stipend they get these days. If they had to pay 1) you know in advance how many will show up. 2) It can be put to a fund to pay the folks that teach.

Not sure how to implement this but its an idea to knock around. I believe in the KISS method if anyone has heard of that and so dont want it to complicated but as I said an idea to kick around.

Scripts I would love to learn as well, be nice to expand on what I make and scripts are the ticket.

Antiquity~

P.S.

I second , third and fourth the motion to divide the events into catagories, I first heard this idea from a post Zapoteth I believe is the name put up in one my posts and that would simply be awsome. To be able to go to only events your looking for such as classes. Or if IM a tringo addict, which I think IM the only person in SL who hasnt played any of those type games or have a clue about them, but to see exactly what I want in a catagory of nothing but what I want at the moment would RAWK!=)

Antiquity again~

I like the registration fee idea.....
At least we would know in advance people will come..

My question is what happens in the case where you schedule a class and can't make it at that time, internet issues, RL issues, I can think of many reasons people might have to cancel. Do we refund or reschedule? Secondly, if we only ask for $25L we would need 20 people to show up to get the $500L already offered by LL.

I feel people are more likely to value something they pay for... so I agree a fee would help. But the truth is I usually end up giving money to newbies, so I would end up refunding the $25L plus some.

I set up my classes so they can be self-taught 24/7 on my land, everything needed for the classes are there 24 hours/7 days a week. I would love to have a way to advertise these self-serve classes so newbies could easily find them. I post them as classes during hours I will be there to help, when I'm 100% sure I'll be there unless of technical issues. But we need a listing for 24 hour activities including educational activities.

Glad to see these topics being discussed

I think one of the main difficulties of getting sufficient people to attend classes is that shortly after they start, a large number get sucked into the club and tringo whirlwind. Although some may want to learn, I suspect the huge majority do not. It seems to me that that is representative of residents as a whole.

Persephone, I'm not sure I agree with your comparison with real life and if you think about it, if the people attending the classes have no prior knowledge, then the analogy is more likely to be with reading class level 1 rather than an advanced class. So I stand by what I said, that classes with less than 5 attending should still be paid.

When I joined, I hunted all over the LL website, looking for help documents or tutorials for building etc and soon found there are pretty much none. So I reiterate, either LL pay one of their staff to write the tutorials or pay instructors a reasonable amount to teach people for them.

Alexa

Hi Kevn,
I like your summary!

What gets me is LL is willing to pay developer awards for creating content in SL, yet won't lift a finger to do the same in the area of educating residents. Yet they keep asking us on how to make improvements in this area.

Well we have answered.

Just like any other areas you want "developed" you need to have incentives. Educating your residents leads to people perhaps going on to create some wonderful content in SL.

It astounds me how often the interrelatedness of SL is missed by LL. One thing begets another and another, and thus when you cut off a limb eventually the body will die. When the spurting blood finally gets noticed they go around asking how we can help but refuse to hand out tourniquets.

Perse, I agree with you on what you said about attendance. However the way things are with the events list format, there isn't an even playing field.

Its one thing to pick out a class from a school catalogue and quite another to find a class tucked away in the SL daily events listings.

Then you have the example of the public school teacher. They still get their salary if students don't show up to class.

Each educational system has well, its own system of compensation. Some go student by student, some have a base salary/incentives and other do a combination of both.

I think in SL you have to factor in a few things. Are we getting compensated for our efforts in preparing and putting together the content - or are we getting compensated for how many people show up to learn what we have prepared?

Does the value of one person learning count less than five people? Kevn mentions getting people to stay in SL after that first week. If I prepare a class and two people show up and learn some cool stuff and they stay on to become productive members of our society - I should still get compensated.

I remember when they paid you to host events. When I threw one and nobody showed up. I sent in my little notification of event held etc anyways. To my suprise I got an email back saying go ahead and submit the event through the regular channel and we'll give you the 250L event host fee since you DID in fact prepare an event and post it up etc. No blame to me cuz nobody showed.
I was being compensated for the effort I put in to at least attempting to provide content.
So it has been done before, and should be done again.

And all this blabber about how paying out devalues the linden. Well we've been on no payout for awhile, and I checked with some folks who watch GOM like its TV and the linden is at an alltime low apparently.

Kevn you are welcome to put up a sign in my shop and a landmark to your place with little description of what it is.

Perhaps when they purchase the class they get a card thats taken up by the teacher, if not attended you can use it for another class, since the money would go to lindens its all gonna pay people that actually did the class right? So useing a card from another would work but then the sign up hmmmm needs thought this was off the top of my head I will think on it=)

Antiquity~

PS contact me in game if your interested in putting up your sign and landmark and is anyone doing a class on how to make prim shoes yet? *sigh ok back to trial and error=p

OH and as for incentives to teach, there is a need and you can hold a class for anything and charge people to come by posting it on events, cant see how this would be illegal, correct me lindens if I am wrong, some people would pay for teaching on alot of things, like me anyone know how to make prim shoes?????=p

HI all. I see some people here who used to attend my classes & mentoring events

I very much miss these & agree with alot of what's been said here as to WHY classes are so scarce in SL these days. It saddens me as it's something I have enjoyed doing within SL & know that I was able to help many in their early days in SL

I do not want to be repetative of others on here that I do agree with but I would like to site a few specific points if I may:

1. New residents do NOT have much $ starting out. I think the idea of charging them to attend classes is just ludicrous. Couple that with the fact that class attendance as is, is POOR. The few that may show up usually when the class is free suddenly will NOT show up if they need to pay for it.
I don't see anything wrong with charging say for advanced classes Classes in whch maybe even established residents could benefit from. But we are talking New residents here who are just trying to grasp the basics of SL. If I had to pay for the basic knowledge in SL when I started out, with as overwhelming as SL can be, well I would NOT be here today.

2. I personally haven't hosted classes/mentoring in ages because while I do miss it. It's hardly worth the effort I put it to prepare to have none show up. It's very discouraging.
a few things that imo that would HELP with that I have spoken to Robin about was

a. It could be an option to do automatic notification of classes/mentoring events only for residents 30 days & younger with a way for them to toggle/opt out of such notifications if they aren't interested OR as Moonshine Herbst suggested last nite maybe a new resident group (that they can join if they like) with notifications of mentor/class events ONLY (no other event spam would be allowed) which could be used for ANYONE who would like to be notified of such events New residents coming in could automatically receive an invitation with a brief description & they can decline if they so choose or they can join & opt out whenever they would like.

b. I THINK what would help classes & mentoring events in part at least, is consistent scheduling. A schedule that people CAN count on. Something that doesn't force them to look at the event calendar (a newbie may have a hard time finding/sorting through it anyway) when these things are on a conistant schedule people in the community..such as your mentors, live helpers, instructors, greeters & lindens would know about them. Maybe even have a simple notecard

Again, there are other points in the previous posts that I do also agree with. These just happen to stick out in my head the most atm.

& it's kinda sad cause I have talked to many people who tell me all the time how much they miss, benefited from, & enjoyed my mentoring events/classes. I would really love to be able to successfully host them again & I KNOW that I am not the only one that feels that way.

IMO sometimes these experiences can be what makes the difference between someone staying in SL or leaving it in their early days.

Great post Mal!

Maybe people, when they sign up, like when they choose a greeter, they could choose to be notified about certain types of classes for their first couple of weeks?

We need some form of notifications back!

Yep Zap - yer speaking my language - I know you've mentioned that several times and I've carrying on about it since they got chopped out.

However here's the last word I heard on this.

Robin says "too many people considered the event notifications to be spam" as being the reason they were turned off. I am still waiting to hear the exact numbers on that. 10 people objected? 50? 100? I personally saw less than 50 people express their dislike for the notifications on these forums here.

And the majority of those do not even attend events in the first place, so I don't understand why policy gets changed in this fashion.

Given that less than 10% active SL users even read or post here, I'm left to assume that Robin got thousands of UNIQUE emails or IMs?

I don't see why a on/off notification toggle can't work or any of the similar ideas laid down on this thread concerning this.

It has already been well established and well documented that SL Basics, classes, education directed at noobies and other noobie support/help etc type events took a complete nosedive in attendance after the hourly notifications were turned off.

No attendance is VERY discouraging when you've put all that effort into preparing a good class, as Mal mentioned. That is one of the leading causes of our no-classes hardly on the calendar situation we got going on now.

Zap-
TY


Brace-

I know that some people had an issue with the "spam" of the event notification. But the ability to #1 toggle the notifications off & on & #2 limit them to educational/mentoring events ONLY & #3 perhaps only allow new residents 30 days & under this option (as previously mentioned) might help significantly cut down the spam.

Of course I can see people tryign to "abuse" the system in trying to disquise advertisements as classes etc BUT I know that the events group is working on these kinds of issues so maybe some penalties in place for people who abuse it would help with that as well. I know there are no easy solutions here. Just thinking based upon what has seemed to help in the past & what we know is not working now.

Hello everyone,

I rarely post here and mostly lurk... I wanted to share some thoughts on this topic, for whatever they are worth:

If we are to live and play in SL, not just as an imitation of the Snowcrash dream, but as a new world we experience and create together, awareness of the environment *at hand* and its possibilities is key. Leaving aside the monetary aspects discussed in this thread, I think it would be good to have educational events become a more integral part SL. Perhaps it would be helpful to have classes/tutorials listed separately from other activities, together with mentor/teacher name and maybe a rating (one rating for the teacher and one rating for the class as a whole, based on past performances). Special educational places, such as the Ivory Tower, should get extra advertising and backing from the Lindens as well.

People can learn from a myriad of places: online web tutorials, fellow residents, etc. and each person has to find whatever works best for their needs. However, if you do decide to invest your time in an inworld classroom, you should feel like you have learned something at the end. And that may mean that, just like in real life, knowing how to do something doesn't automatically make you a good/clear teacher. Rating systems are pretty simplistic, but they are better than looking around the forum for someone to praise one of the teachers, and then attend the class based on that person's opinion.

I also happen to think that teaching things like Photoshop inworld is a bit problematic, because "students" need to try to manipulate the image at the same time as you're getting the instructions. For that sort of thing, web tutorials might accomplish their aim better.

Just my two cents, I shall return to my world of shadows now

Great ideas! I really like the bit about having classes listed seperatly from events..

Hi Thea... you need to get out of the shadows more often!!!

soj

Thea-

I too Agree. Actually there are some things regarding events & event listings being discussed & worked on. So I think classes/mentoring will find itself in it's own category within events at some point. & events will hopefully be searchable by diff categories as well as a "list all" option.

& btw something some of you may not have been in SL long enough to know/remember but once upon a time LINDEN's taught some classes. the very first class I attended was about Events & was hosted by Jeff linden.

hehe i'm trying, Soj

it's just that i don't think i'm saying anything new. there are as many good suggestions as there are residents (at least!). i suppose the SL vote system was a way for all these ideas to sort of "self-regulate" before the Lindens read them (otherwise they'd have to sort through thousands)

i decided to post on this topic finally because the stance towards education about possibilities in SL should be part of the overall vision Lindens have for this place. not everyone who joins SL will be a builder or a scripter, but everyone should know you *can* do these things and they should have access to the knowledge as part of the whole package.

most techies who join can figure stuff out and learn by trial and error, by getting information and processing it on their own. it's up to LL if they want to have SL available to other people as well. i'm talking about people who come here for the experience, to expand their minds, to see something new, to be amazed. neither group is better than the other. in fact, they can both bring something to the community.

that being said, LL has many technical issues to resolve before they implement a change in the interface based on some big vision. and yet...

I'd gladly pay for private tuition in scripting. I need to go at my own pace, sometimes fast sometimes slow, and 1-to-1 works best for me. IM me?

good to know, Malana.
hehe...the good ol' times, eh? unfortunately, it looks like the lindens won't have any spare time on their hands to teach anytime soon.

Well...if anyone wants to temporarily donate a nice, clear area of land for me to teach intermediate to advanced level waterfall and water design, pls let me know~

Would be happy to do that once in a while...

Happy to lend land for any teaching purposes. IM me.

Wow..when it rains it pours..NOT the best description for the situation though!!

Touchstone offered me a way to teach water design classes Sunday the 26th at 3pm est/noon pst...and the following Thursday..at a time not yet chiseled on the events list. Tysvm, Garnet for your offer however...you were probably a lucky charm

Why thank you. Offer is still open to any other teachers.

One other, perhaps minor, problem is the requirement that each class be submitted separately and wait a week for approval.

It would be nice to just do a curriculum without having to specify exactly what will be covered in each class--that is, submit a course concept instead of having to have every class in that course approved.

actually, there is no one week wait for approval. all i need to know is a rough outline of what you want to teach (just to make sure its a legitimate class and not 'how to spam residents and make big bucks'). i usually get back to people with an approval quickly. each class must be submitted individually to receive the 500 Lindens but all you need to do, once your course has been approved, is to state the name of the class, the date, and the # of attendees. The reason we require a minimum attendence is to prevent gaming. I get a complaints from students who go to classes and the instructors don't show up...

The instructor application process now is as simple as it can get so I'm not sure I buy the argument that its too hard to become an instructor. jeska has done a great job with the volunteer program and it is possible in the future Mentors and Instructors may become a single entity.

regarding some of the larger issues discussed in this thread, I have learned since i originally posted that there are lots of classes happening and educational groups forming that are completely independent of our 'official' education system. rather than attempt to develop a bunch of new features and policies, my goal is to work towards simply publicizing what is already happening in-world and connect new users with classes they might be interested in. This is somewhat of an extension of our company philosophy to 'get out of the way' and figure out how we can provide support where its needed. I would encourage anyone involved in educational groups in SL to submit their classes to our event calendar and email us to receive Linden $. The event calendar will also be updated soon with a separate education category to provide better visability for classes.

In addition, there is an SL Education Senate that is attempting to bring the disparate educational groups together under an umbrella organization. I would recommend checking them out as well...

Yay!

But we want whacky new features