Revamping the Education System -- PLEASE READ

Edit: While the credit/voucher system idea is not very popular, I'm not fully convinced it couldn't be evolved into a good system. I'm not going to persue or contemplate it any further, but I figured I'd leave it up just in case it inspires someone to come up with a brilliant way to do it. ;3
I made the Credits proposal gray, and Feature Ideas green, to draw attention to what I now feel is the more important aspect of this post. Any further replies to this post should concentrate on the Feature Ideas (either developing them, or even just pointing out the holes).

This post concentrates on ideas relating to two of the three focus points for restructuring the education system in SL:
-Revamping the Instructor payment system
-Finding ways of better connecting students to educational events

Proposal:

[A]: "Replenishing Education Credits"

Summary:
I propose an "Education Credit" system, similar to the proposed "Voucher" system, but treated something like currency, rather than as an object. This could be integrated into the currency system, like a "parallel" feature. Residents would be limited (depending on certain criteria) to how many credits can be spent per hour and day.

Key Points/Features:
- "Credit Cap": prevents mass influx of $L, even encouraging premium subscription
-- Individual credits "replenish" 12 hours after being spent.
-- Basic accounts under 2 months old and Premium accounts would be capped at 6 credits
-- Basic accounts older than 2 months would be capped at 2 credits.
--- Additional, one-time-use credits could be purchased at face value.

- Credits received by an Instructor are placed in their "credits coffers" as one-time-use (non-replenishable) credits.

- Any non-replenishing credit may be "cashed in" for its value in L$. Therefore, if a resident purchases an additional credit, they may later cash it back in (like a refund), instead of only being able to spend it on classes.

- When paying an Instructor (or classroom, see below), replenishing credits are debited first. The ability to purchase additional credits is primarily to give someone the ability to take as many classes as they want, without having to wait for their credits to refresh.

-Credits would maintain "origin" data, and can be refunded by the Instructor.

: Feature: "Local Area" Chat Rooms
--Residents must be within 30 meters of the chat room Host to join/remain in the chat.
-- Hosts may approve or deny join requests, and kick or ban people from the chat.
-- Chat rooms do not remain open once the Host leaves/closes it.
-- A "close doors" option could automatically deny any further join requests when activated
-- Residents flagged as Instructors would have a checkbox-option available to flag the room as a Classroom.
---- Residents pay credits through the Join Request dialog, and are then automatically joined, unless the Instructor has already closed the doors, (in which case the payment is automatically refunded).
---- Classrooms would automatically submit reports to Linden Labs, most likely at the point the Classroom is closed

[C]: Feature: "Nearby Events/Chats"
-- This feature would involve small, unobstructive icons that pop up at the edge of their view, (most likely at the top somewhere).
-- 2 Icons would potentially appear: one for Events and one for Chats
-- Icons would appear in the following cases:
---- When the resident enters a Sim with Events in-progress
---- If an Event becomes in-progress in the Sim the resident is currently in.
---- If the resident comes within range of a chat-room or rooms
-- Icons remain visible until the respective criteria is no longer met
-- Clicking the Events icon opens a Local Events list window, similar to the Events tab in Find. Clicking the Chats icon does the same for chat rooms.
-- Residents could activate/deactivate any of these generalized alerts, including filtering out mature-flagged events, and specific categories.
-- Educational Events could be given their own, separate icon

Any system that creates a voucher will have the same problems no matter what you name that voucher. It will leave new people paranoid about ensuring their education voucher isnt gonna get wasted. It will encourage Instructors who put harsher attendance limits on their class. It forces new people in one manner or another to have ot PAY to learn the tools of the game they are already PAYING FOR in other ways eithe rby tier, premium or rent / Lindex costs.

The only purpose of a voucher is to have a proof for attendance to prevent Instructors from cheating the system. Impliment a plan that actually targets the problem rather than dances around it and adds additional expenses on the backs of the students.

The only thing that a student should have to do is is show up and pay attention. The rest of the process should be transparent to a student. They shouldnt care or even have to know about the Instructor getting compensation. They should just worry if the class is good and if they should recommend it to their friends.

I've outlined in very explicite detail, methods that will do all the required tracking and verifications. In makes tracking automated so that no man-hours are required for any stage of the payment aspect. It also removes virtually any method of dishonesty. Someone standing in the area of the class can be submited as a participant by the Instructor. No-One not there will get validated to help out. Both sides of the learning experience are accountable and no one can cheat the other.

With ANY type of voucher you're gonna open up the fact that NOT HAVING ANY ACCOUNT VERIFICATION will mean someone can make alt accounts just for the sole purpose of giving a renewing supply of vouchers to an instructor who doesnt really do any work except get paid for making alts. It can also cause issues where a student doesnt want to pay up and an instructor would feel obligated to not allow them into the class in fear of not making their voucher quota to get paid.

Thank you, after 12 responses to my other post, I FINALLY get a response that acknowledges my central point. I think you still missed a few of my other points though...


Did you see the part of my post about the Chat/Class Rooms? They could be useful for further automation without much or any risk... they can be a completely separate idea from my credit system idea.

I haven't really looked into that "No Account Validation" thing yet, which would be why I haven't taken it into consideration... I'm kinda just finding out about it. So.. I will try to look into that after I get home from work.

What I don't understand is... why would someone pay $10 per alt just to get a couple pennies a day? It's a LOT of work... and would generally take quite a while to break even. And if the chatroom aspect is used... it adds more work, and logs on Lindens servers that are specifically flagged for Education, which a Linden could browse through and see: a lot of silent, short classes with the exact same people showing up every single day.

Those are good aspects. Its why i didnt disagree with them =-) I also included similar in my proposal. Good writing overall but that one concept (vouchers) is a Very Bad Thing(tm).