For some time we’ve been working on a plan that we’ve come to call ‘My Course’. The idea behind ‘My Course’ is to allow ChinesePod users to create and track the progress of a personalized study plan.
We see My Course as one more step in enabling learners to study on their own terms. Regardless of level or time frame, we want to make it possible for people like you to create a mini-syllabus on the basis of your individual needs. If you wish to prepare for a business trip to China in 6 months, My Course will allow you to put together a series of lessons/topics (at the right level) into a personalized study plan. In this way, you can work your way through each lesson, allowing you to maximize your study time and preparation for that trip. All the while you keep a record of your study and get feedback from the community of learners and teachers on ChinesePod.
If you wish to just visit and travel around China, My Course can give you a realistic framework for learning basic travel Chinese. Whether you need to be able to take taxis or talk to a Chinese toddler, with over 200 lessons in the archive, My Course will allow you to find the things you want to know about.
This week, we launched a beta version of My Course. If you’d like to try it out, I provide instructions below.
First off, you will need to register for the free 7-day trial or purchase a premium subscription to use My Course. If you’ve done that:
1. Log on to ChinesePod.com using your email address and password.
2. Find a lesson you would like to study inside the Podcast Archive.
3. Once you have found a lesson that interests you, click on the “Add to My Course” button. The course be added to your personal My Course. Add as many course as you want. Use the filter bar and tags inside the Podcast Archive to quickly locate lessons.
4. My Course is located inside the Learning Center. The titles of the lessons you added will appear in My Course. Click on the lesson title to open the lesson pod.
My course tracks your activity as you complete the lesson pods in My Course. You can quickly identify what you have completed. It also comes with a personalized RSS feed which you can load into iTunes an other popular RSS readers to download the podcast audio lessons you have selected. In addition, you can download the PDF transcripts in one group to save time and stay organized.
These are early days for My Course. (I envision a couple of months before we get it into full swing.) In the meantime, we’d be really glad for any feedback you might have to offer.
Thx,
Ken Carroll
pretzellogic on 
Andrew Cockerham on 
Dave on
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
Here is a discussion that was started on the forum: http://wushu.be/ChinesePod/viewtopic.php?t=115
Ken,
I finally get to understand how this works…When you start the learning center and you still have added no lessons there are just two buttons. Hitting either of these just produces confusion. The RSS button shows me an xml file. The pdf button an error message. Now I understand that in the space above these I have to build a list.
Ok, I just tested it and I see what the idea behind it is. I just think it needs to be polished a little bit. just a couple of suggestions:
1. The buttons to add lessons only appear when you consult the archive. But as a beginner I want to add the very first lessons. How do I do this? If I have to go through the archive I have to scroll down hit ‘previous’, scroll down again, etc some 20 times before I get to last years podcasts. In the learning center the lessons are all listed (quick links) but when I access them through that page there is no button to add the lesson to ‘My course’.
2. When I have added a lesson. I want to be able to access the exercises, grammar, etc. But how do I do this? There are no links to this, only the (blog)comments related to the lesson. When I access a lesson through the learning center|quick links I can see symbols at the top of the page (they look like grey or red flags or arrows) that give me direct access to the activities. Where are these when you access a lesson through the archive?
I’m ready to do some more testing.
Regards
I think as the number of lessons increases this becomes an almost basic and needed fuction. And it will help people to sort through the maze. The way I did it myself was just to download all the elementary lessons (my level to just a bit below my level at the time) and just gave 15 minutes each. Just a once listen through and read the PDF. Then when new ones come in I spend more time. One problem will be that some of the older ones will be stale — think Schwarzenegger a year from now.
On the other hand, I think people looking to target one field (business chinese for example) is a pipe dream. A guided course on what you are interested in can probably only been done starting with more intermediate and really only advanced skills. Some people/beginners might see a guided course as something adding value and sign up for that. But I think they will be a bit disappointed in their progress since the time required to get to a point where you can target a field of interst is quite long.
So I see this as a much needed fuction but doesnt really add too much for me since I just listen to the new shows as they come in…
What I’d really like to see is an expanded work bank where the audio is hooked up and cross-referenced to use of the word in various lessons and expansions. Imagine clicking on a flash card for tai4 gui4 le and getting a list of links to all the lessons/expansions where it was used in cpod and we can hear it used in context. That would really separate you from other language learning concepts to date.
Hello, just an update…I’ve done some more testing.
Forget point 2. in my former comment. I found the link now, it is just below the title of the lesson (‘Review Materials (Premium)’). So that is fine to get to the lesson’s exercises…
So the only issue I have is that I would like to be able to add lessons from the learning center. Just a button will do
Thanks for the feature. I will certainly use it.
Marc (in Belgium)
I think it would be good to have multiple courses. So you divide lessons in different subjects etc, I think we also need the option to remove a lesson as well and be able to sort them in some kind of order by sortable columns and/or drag and dropping them. Maybe have a complete scrollable lesson list as well, where you can just select the lesson you want and drag and drop it in which ever course you want.
I agree entirely with Russell.
1) I can see that the My Course is good for people who have just come to the site and need to find things suitable for themselves. However, I do not find it useful, as I have been downloading the course as they arrive, and I have them all on my PC.
2) But I DO want to search via cross references. I have already asked for this and there has been no response
, so I wont repeat why I think it is a good idea. As I said before, even if you supplied a machine readable source of the vocab (XML? comma separated?), then I could write a program to do the cross referencing (I would even give the results back to the community if you wanted!).
3) (Something different from Russell!) My main problem is how to get from Beginners to Intermediate level? I have done most of the newbie and beginner lessons (which I have enjoyed greatly). Now I want to try and move “up”. But there is a HUGE gap between the levels. I have decided that I must just study the intermediate lessons via the online learning centre, and just listen, listen, listen till some of it makes sense. But it is a real backwards step, going from “yes I am ok with this” to “what on earth are they saying”. I would be most grateful for any suggestions as to how to bridge the gap.
thanks for a great learning tool
I have another worry about the My Course. It shows a cross in the boxes (for Dialog, Exercises, etc) just because you have visited the page. So even one visit to a dialog page will tick it as being “completed”, even if you have only looked at one phrase. I dont think tis is very useful; I would like to know that I have completed a scetion, not that I might have visited it once and then goine somewhere else. Of course, the system cant tell when you have completed a section, since there is no “event” that would signal this. So it has to be the user that decides that a section is completed. How about a button on the dialog/expansion/exercise page saying “Im done”? Only when this button was pressed would the cross appear in My Course?
Good feedback. It’s being processed!