Lessons?

Are the lessons slowly dying out? I've noticed that most of them aren't moving, and that the teachers who aren't accepting students haven't really done anything with said students for some time. I'm just curious, because if they are still interested in teaching, I would like to try a lesson, but it doesn't seem like I can if they are teaching lessons that haven't moved in a few months. Is there anyway to remedy this situation, or am I sol?

You're right, things have become a bit static lessons-wise.

I meant to add a feature which would forcibly terminate lesson pairings if the lesson thread was inactive for x months, but never got around to it. Perhaps I'll do that at some point. The other option would obviously be to clean out obsolete lesson threads/pairings manually. Expect something to happen in the near future. :)

I think old lesson threads are still useful readings for beginners. There is no need to delete them, but moving them to another place would be a good idea.

M

It's hard to keep things constant with the issue of "life" coming up for both parties. Most teachers I know do their best to keep things moving along, even if not through the threads.

I know that I, for example, am in fairly constant contact with my students outside of the lesson thread, so a lot of my teaching happens that way. I suppose the issue may simply be that the whole notion of threads is difficult...I have a hard time maintaining one and the students have a hard time being focussed on the single topic of the thread because, ultimately, they all just want to learn more about whatever the teacher's areas of expertise are.

By making these specialized lesson threads, it's sort of subtly discouraging because it makes it like a chore for both parties. I find that, usually, my students just like to have a constant source of expertise that they can come to when they need specific critiques on a piece, suggestions for where to go from there, tips, tricks, and other such miscellaneous things that are difficult to work into a set curriculum without making it so ridiculously general as to defeat the purpose of the specific lesson thread entirely.

For example, I've just set my status to not accepting students anymore, and it's not because I don't want to teach any other people - it's just that I don't have the time to be making and maintaining more specific lesson threads with the individual lesson plans that each student requires. I much prefer to simply communicate with them openly, at their convenience and mine, about whatever subject they happen to need guidance on at that time. So I'm not so much "not accepting students" as "not accepting more lesson-based pairing requests."

Those are my thoughts on the subject, anyway, and I'm wondering if any of the other teachers agree with me...it may be something to consider with regards to what exact purpose the lesson threads serve for those of us who prefer not to teach in the strictly linear academic way.

Lesson threads are a useful way in which to quantify the back-and-forth occurring between students and teachers. True, you might communicate a little (or even exclusively) outside of the thread, but YC won't know about that. ;)

I'm in the process of creating a system which automatically terminates student/teacher pairings if the teacher fails to assign a lesson thread after 14 days, or if the lesson thread receives no new posts for 90 days (in the case of the latter, it would probably then be moved to an archive subforum). This should ensure that the Lessons forum stays fresh and that teachers' student lists aren't full of pairings which stopped being active a long ago, at least in the eyes of YC.

Hope the above isn't too objectionable. It might place a little added pressure on both parties, but I really think that's a minor consideration compared to the issue of inactive pairings and/or lesson threads, which could prove a barrier to those who wish to acquire a teacher.

Thanks for doing something about the old lessons situation. It will be helpful for those who would like to participate in lessons with those teachers that are currently available but are not listed as such.

I've just activated the system which clears out old lesson pairings for the first time. This has resulted in the sending out of a rather large number of PMs to various teachers. Apologies for that, but rest assured that it should never happen again on a similar scale. ;)

And, as usual, if there are any issues which have cropped up, please contact me.

At this stage, there look to have been a few lesson threads which were erroneously archived. I've moved them back and I will endeavour to fix the underlying cause of the problem.