Last modified: 2014-08-07 16:53:35 UTC
The biggest thing I could see to help the course pages make it easier for students to get started would be a simple way for them to communicate with the editors (such as ambassadors or the instructor) who are helping them. To that end, I suggest something like a big "ask a question" or "help me" button on the course page that brings a popup entry box for a student to ask for help. The student's request would get posted in a new section to the talk page (and the popup confirmation message should link to the talk page). Even better would be an opt-out option for instructors and ambassadors to be notified on their own talk pages whenever a new help request is posted by a student, pointing them to the talk page where they can answer the student. This would significantly reduce the coordination cost and level of confusion for ambassadors and students trying to figure out the best ways to communicate with each other.
Right now the MyCourses page sort of acts like a communication and help hub. Since the communication thing is not working on test2 you can't see it, and the help thing is done via an extension not currently Deployed on test2, so you can't see that either. You can see a screenshot of both here though: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:DidYouKnow#Screenshots I think we should be consistent with how we add such features and make sure it's a solid overall user experience and not a bloated pile of features that don't work nicely together. So before I do any work on this, esp additions, I'd like more discussion involving Frank.
I agree that anything in this area will require some planning and more thorough design work first. For now, we can compile potential communication features here. One relevant feature would be a way for instructors to post a message to all of their students at once. (We've had a request for this from an instructor, and it makes sense.)
