Accessible Teaching

One concern I have, which I think falls under the new open source API development, is that the teachers and guides are not accessible to players. There is a teaching league, and it’s always empty, yet there are people constantly asking for and wondering if they can get reviews/teaching games.

There should be some sort of dedicated teaching channel, and perhaps a button at the top linking to teaching aids at the top, next to the “Puzzles” link. roy7 has made some updated shapes content, and there are OGS hosted aids such as “Shape Up” and that one 9x9 pdf. These should be made prevalent, along with easy access to teachers.

That said, I don’t think having a link to IWTG is good, especially for people who are inexperienced. IWTG only stresses capturing, and causes more issues than it solves.

6 Likes

Agreeable

Making Go education more accessible should be a top priority I feel, so this is a good idea.

I second this. The Teaching Ladder is much more easily accessible on KGS and I think that helps a lot of players find stronger people to help them learn and progress. I think OGS is well suited for teaching and additions, such as those suggested by Kaworu, would do much for our community.

2 Likes

Notes:

  • mark5000: Some kind of official integrated “Learn” feature. Possible to integrate it with reviews and review requests, but primarily oriented around getting newbies the basics to start playing intelligently

  • http://imgur.com/a/XzdLT (Mark’s model UI based on Lichess: https://en.lichess.org/learn#/)

  • taking a “territory first” approach, capturing second.

  • disable “estimate score” while the game is ongoing

4 Likes

Chiming in here to note that I’m in full support of re-envisioning the tutorial and learning section of the site and am happy to support in what ways i can with code, or stay out of the way and click “Merge” if y’all would prefer.

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https://github.com/online-go/online-go.com/pull/132 is a stab at the “learning hub” idea, feel free to make suggestions.

This is a first dip in the codebase for me. Interactive tutorial etc. will follow hopefully.

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I think a good first step would be to just show the number of observers in the watch games list. As it is, its hard to find people to kibitz with.

How can OGS provide accessible learning:
OGS has a large amount of studious DDK’s and SDK’s looking for reviews, looking for lectures and looking for content.
So rather then asking what do other servers offer. I think it is best too ask what can we offer and get the ball rolling without a lot of work, here is a list of ideas I believe can:

  1. Identifying tutors and teachers in chat.
    -I think by offering people who engage learning and development of OGS users should be rewarded with a tutors icon.
    In chat, a mod has a hammer and purple text. A subscriber has a yellow coin. I feel we can offer teachers\tutors on OGS a scholar’s hat.
    The benefit of this scholar icon would let that user have an increased awareness that they teach on OGS.

  2. Scheduled Learning and development

  • Much like the Small trophy and count down for a tournament we can offer the same for scheduled learning. A small icon next to your friendless counting down the days or hours until the next live lesson.
    -Scheduling content can get expensive or complicated based on what is offered. Offering the teacher/tutor chat icon to the people who want to volunteer their time for scheduled public lesson may encourage people to provide content freely.
    -By having a format (see 2.1 ie: Game Reviews) it can make it easier to provide scheduled learning.

2.1) Content for scheduled learning
-When content is available the icon for scheduled learning will appear, and count down similar to tournaments.

  • Game Reviews - This seems basic; offering a game of interest (ie: 1 dan vs 1 dan games) at a scheduled time. The reviewer will enter the chat and review the game live taking questions from people in chat. If we provide the game to be reviewed in private 1-24 hours before the lesson is live we can have better questions asked during chat, more complete variations and it ultimately helps students see what they are seeing and not seeing with their own self reviews.
  • Lectures / lessons - This can be expanded on further, but providing even simple lectures on Dami, Tsumego, Joseki or even spotting sente can expand the lesson library of OGS.

2.2) Archived Lessons
-A place to quickly find and sort through game reviews and lessons by the tutor or content would slowly develop the content of OGS learning library and could be a feature offered to subscribers. Perhaps when enough content is available.

11 Likes

@AgentNeigh all of this sounds amazing! Fully supportive of all suggested.

+10 i wanna lil scholar hat

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Same, but I’m curious; what would the qualifications be? I doubt it would just be “whoever wants one gets one.”

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Great ideas AgentNeigh

Me too :smiley:

Buzz kill :stuck_out_tongue: But yes, this would be hard to judge.
Would there need to be a min rank requirment for a scholar hat? (If there is a rank requirment then rank can not be the only requirment. )
Or just a min number of live reviews
Or a min number of likes/“recomendations” from the community
Or something bestoyed by mods/admins?

I have suggested a central news page that could direct people to

  • News, Notifications, Change Log entry
  • Events and Games of particular notability
  • Archived reviews / lessons / guidance
  • Special interest content (e.g. regional offline meetings, discussion on equipment)
  • etc., etc.

This would help in achieving what’s suggested.

1 Like

For the Scholar hat icon:
I think it would be based on the mods and owner of OGS to decide on this.
In my opinion the Qualifications would be:

  1. Users Providing scheduled learning per days; (ie 1 scheduled learning per 90 days)
  2. Actively teaching / looking for students.
  3. Are open to being asked for reviews.
  4. Are Actively creating, updating or improving Accessible learning;
    4.1) Active Creators of new quality Tsumego Packages.
    4.2) Content Material providers; Such as Francisa providing 81 little lions for OGS use.(( 81 Little Lions - An introduction to the 9x9 board for advanced beginners ))
  5. Special case users, such as users facilitating scheduling learning (Finding games games for review, assisting with creating lectures or lessons) or being a point of contact for mods and scholars.
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I love the idea of News.
For example when live Alpha Go Matches where being reproduced on OGS live.
It would be nice if this was featured more publicly.
A Learning and Development Archive is super important and will only help spoon feed knowledge.

Note: I had someone comment about people not wanting to do voice lectures, lessons and reviews.
I don’t believe this is necessary. People seem comfortable with text reviews. All that will changed is it’s scheduled for anyone to join.

I would pitch it like a self examination.
Welcoming people to review a game and come with questions, red flags, moves and variations to suggest.

This same idea applies to lessons: by offering a game for a extended period of time people can review in private with a focus or idea in mind, such as:
"Spot the Meai moves / Sente moves / gote moves / ladders / tsumego / etc"
This will give the users time to do a self review and then during the schedualed learning they see what they missed and ask questions.

Even a simple texted based lesson with people asking questions in real time can engage independent thinking and learning.
That’s the point I’m getting at.
Independent thinking and learning paired with an answer key.

2 Likes

I agree that teaching in OGS should be more accessible than just sending pms and teaching game requests, having your game reviewed is good, but something like a live Go lecture every hour is even better. Also looking forward to the hat things xD

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More hats are definitely needed

Great ideas, AgentNeigh. +100 to all, but +101 to the tiny hats :slight_smile: