The most difficult thing is setting up times because of time zone issues and their own life things such as jobs etc. So it's hard to get them in a group chat study. It works fine studying individually with each of them though.
That's basically what you're going to need to do. Get a calender or a schedule saying "every week on these days at these times there will be a study session in the chat rooms". If it was on the website somewhere, enough people who can show up during those times are eventually going to. The chat rooms could then be divided up into skill level and/or learning materials that they have been using (once enough people start showing up). It really depends on how many people you get showing up. I just don't see anyone learning efficiently with 15+ people chatting randomly unless they were intermediate or above.clay wrote:This is something that would nice to organize though.
For example if the site had a calendar of meeting times, people could 'meet' in the chat rooms or forums, or groups for specific purposes. I'm going to give this some serious thought while we are building the upgraded site. Obviously having someone to practice with/ask questions with is something a lot of people want.
It would be nice to do it with learning materials which is impossible or at least very difficult but still. If you could say during the session sometime that the following sections are to be done for the next session for review. That would give each session of people something to talk about. Questions they have about what they learned in their lessons and comparing answers to their exercises.
It seems as though it's going to have to be an intermediate above thing if it's going to be successful. Probably best to keep it simple and have people just randomly talking/asking questions on all skill levels in a single chat room.