Voucher System Holes

The FIRST premise is that Instruction needs to be improved.

We need to be precise here: Exactly what needs to be improved? Does the quality of education need to be improved? Is the quantity lacking? Is the quanity in the right areas lacking? Do we need to give new users an incentive to go to classes? Really the Linden crew needs to define this better.

The SECOND premise is that a Voucher system will help educate the new players.

This seems to be an attempt to give new players an incentive to attend classes. It is not clear the value of the vouchers or who they would be of value to? Does the student recieve $L from spending an education voucher? Does the Instructor recieve $L from teaching new users with education vouchers? Do both recieve $L? How will people buy new education vouchers?

(Identify Problem, Find Solution, Act) The IFA process is time tested.

I am not a fan of the Linden's proposed voucher system--I've outlined an alternative proposal in another thread. That said, you have the first premise wrong.

LL's problem with the current system is that it will not scale well as SL continues to grow. As it stands, it is taking significant employee time to administer the class payments and oversee the program as a whole. This problem will only grow worse as SL continues to expand. LL needs a system that is mostly automated to be able to continue to support the Instructor program.

Suggestions that LL just hire some more people are not going to go anywhere. The community team needs all its people--current and future--doing productive work in the world and at LL; not spending hours processing class payment emails. SL needs LL's community team members working on real issues--not doing menial, easily automated work.

Thanks for spelling this out Carl. I've seen so many people say they don't see how the current system is broken. What some people are missing is while on the Instructor's end the system might not be broken yet, but how long can LL keep up with the admin side before we really start to feel it on our side?

I'd rather find some automated system of some sort so that instead of hiring more Lindens to process our payments, they can hire Lindens that make more of an impact on the world as a whole.

I'll chime in just to say I wholeheartedly agree with Zany and Carl. Definitely I'd rather our Lindens working to change our second world for the better, not sitting behind mounds of paperwork.

On the admin side of things, I'll admit that I did begin to feel the increased load reflected on the Instructors side as early as 6 months ago, around when I started actively recruiting and training new teachers. We did see an explosion of classes in SL starting about then, and it started to take longer to approve instructors and process class payments even then. Looking back to that now, I shouldn't be too surprised that changes are being proposed to scale the program. But that's hindsight...

(:

Sel