If you are a Livemocha community member, you will agree that our community is one of the most important aspects of what we do. And because of that, we want you to know that we are here to help, support, and encourage your language-learning journey.
There is a lot of talk in our social media channels about the upcoming changes to Livemocha, which will be fully released this summer. Some of what is being said is true: some, not so much. What is wholly true, however, is that you, our community, are passionate about our product and love what we have been doing. (Thank you!) That’s why we invited you to contact us directly, and ask that you continue to do so through the migration process.
Why are you changing?
Is this because of Rosetta Stone?
What will make the new Livemocha an improvement over the current website for the individual user?
Why move people over if the new site isn’t finished?
How were the new lessons planned and developed?
What about spam, unwelcome messages, inappropriate images?
What about questions like: chat, courses, “Is Livemocha free?”
Why are you changing?
A couple of years ago, we realized that the technology that Livemocha was built on was outdated. The way that the original Livemocha page was built was very limiting: bugs took way too long to fix, and making even simple changes was time consuming and ultimately not cost effective
The way that we have structured the new platform has opened up the ability for us to edit content and tighten up the system easily and quickly. We’ll be able to support mobile devices, new and improving technologies, and can continue to bring you new and exciting features faster than ever.
And, with this new technology, we are able to offer more, better content. Our content creation tools allow our amazing teachers to build new learning content every single day. Which means you constantly have new material to learn with.
It also allows us to offer third person content creation, editing, and tracking for enterprise and educational purposes. For example, if a teacher uses this platform as part of their curriculum, they can create their own lessons and courses within the structure of the site, control what their students see – e.g. translations can be made available for beginning language learners, and made unavailable for more advanced students – and draw reports on how the students are progressing in their courses.
These features have never been available before in the online education space, and we are pleased and very proud to be able to offer them.
Is this because of Rosetta Stone?
This transition has been in the works for over a year, long before our partnership with Rosetta Stone. They liked what we were doing and are now able to help us finish what we’ve started – it is with the support of Rosetta Stone that we are able to make all of what we are building a reality.
Really. That’s it. No hidden agenda. We think that’s pretty cool. We hope you will too.
What will make the new Livemocha an improvement over the current website for the individual user?
Since we started Livemocha in 2007, we have learned a lot about what works and what doesn’t in the online language learning space. What we have found is that a skills-based learning lesson structure, with the support of native speakers, and incentives to learn and to help others do the same is a more effective way to learn, practice, and master a new language.
Why move people over if the new site isn’t finished?
A few months ago we invited people to try out the beta that we were working on so that they could get a feel for what we were developing and to give us feedback. Since then, we’ve brought over chunks of people to learn and begin to help each other. With so many members, this migration had to be a gradual process and we have continued to improve – based largely on your feedback along the way.
How were the new lessons planned and developed?
All of our lessons follow the Livemocha methodology of Whole-Part-Whole. You can read more about that here. We developed this methodology with the University of Oregon’s Language Resource Center, and it’s been proven to work.
Our curators build the language curriculum within this structure, and then we have an amazing team of authors worldwide who write the actual lesson content. Those lessons are then edited and checked by our curation team, and then they go live. Our teachers and curators are an amazingly talented group of teachers, and course designers who help us build our language learning curriculum.
How can I earn more points to get more lessons? Why wasn’t I given enough points to get all of the lessons?
The Livemocha system was designed to incentivize you to do your lessons and help others with theirs. By doing learning and helping activities, you earn points that can be used to unlock new lessons; the more you learn and help, the more access you have to lessons.
What assurances can you give learners that we will get accurate and helpful reviews in exchange for their time or money?
Quick answer – Rate your reviewer!
If you find that the people who are reviewing your work are helpful – or not – we want to know about it. It is with your feedback and involvement that we will be able to assure the quality of review that is being offered up by community members. As for the expert reviewers that we have selected and migrated to the new site, they are under the same scrutiny as anyone in the community; if they are doing a good job, give them a thumbs up. If they aren’t, give them a thumbs down.
What about spam, unwelcome messages, inappropriate images?
We take these things very seriously. To that end, we have made concerted efforts to eliminate unwelcome and inappropriate experiences on the new platform.
Only people who choose to be connected, through our double-opt-in system, will be able to communicate via messaging, thereby removing the option for just anyone to send you a message.
All images that are uploaded to the website are put through a stringent confirmation process assuring that they do not contain offensive or inappropriate content.
What languages do you offer?
As of now, we now support 34 languages on the new Livemocha platform, including:
| English | Spanish | Portuguese (BR) | Italian | French |
| German | Japanese | Mandarin Chinese | Arabic | Russian |
| Belarusian | Portuguese-PT | Turkish | Polish | Hindi |
| Croatian | Dutch | Finnish | Ukrainian | Catalan |
| Slovak | Korean | Hebrew | Hungarian | Indonesian |
| Swedish | Bulgarian | Esperanto | Latvian | Romanian |
| Farsi | Greek | Serbian | Marathi |
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Stay tuned for news about even more languages!
A lot of the questions that were posed to us last week have already been answered on our FAQ’s page. Questions such as:
What about:
Chat?
Friends?
Private messaging?
My courses?
Tokens and Mocha points?
Is Livemocha free?
Please remember that new features are being added all the time, and changes are being made to some of the features that are currently listed. If you have a question or want more information, feel free to look here first. Then, if you don’t see what you’re looking for, email us at blog@livemocha.com. We are happy to answer your questions.
Thank you!
The post Our community has some questions. Here are some answers. appeared first on Livemocha.