I'm excited to share with you some updates we have made to ClassPoint ahead of the beginning of the new semester.
ClassPoint was originally started as a discussion center for college students. We especially had in mind those 500-person freshman-year classes that can be so easy to get lost in if you don't know where to go for help. Keeping that original goal in mind, we've completely overhauled our forums to be much easier to use and to help you connect with more of your classmates.
Course Forums
First, we realized that the forums were too narrowly focused on particular courses taught during particular semesters. So we've grouped all of the forums for each course together. So, for example, while UT's Chemistry 301 course taught by Dr. Laude in Fall 2008 used to have its own forum, it's now combined with every other Chemistry 301 section offered by UT. Now students can easily look back on discussions from previous semesters, and people considering whether to take a course can look in one place to get a feel for what it's like.
Department and School Forums
We also realized that discussions shouldn't be restricted to course-related topics. Sometimes you might want to start a discussion or post a question that pertains to your whole department or school, and you want many people to be able to read it. So, we've created forums for each department and school.
New discussion pages
The new forum and discussion pages are much cleaner and more intuitively organized than the old versions. They should offer an easy way to browse a large number of discussions and post in them. Hopefully the new layout will speak for itself:
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And we've made watching forums and threads easier than ever with the options panel above any forum or thread. Watching a discussion will put it in the "Your watched forums" panel, and the discussion or forum will be highlighted whenever there is a new post:
Cleaner navigation menus
We realized that our old navigation menus were getting cluttered with lists of features, and were not usefully organized. So we've moved a few things around, and introduced drop-down menus, so that you can still quickly get to your favorite features without having to search for them:
Sharing
We've now made it easier than ever to share your course schedule or anything from ClassPoint at all. You can now use the "Share" dropdown menu on the planner to share your schedule using Facebook or a permanent link, without ever having to leave the page:
And you can now share any page from ClassPoint via Facebook, Digg, or email, by using the "share" menu at the top of any page:
Finally, so you can tell us what you think...
We've added forums to discuss ClassPoint itself. We will use these to announce future updates, but you can also use them to post questions, comments or feedback.
We started ClassPoint not just to offer the best course features around, but to be a community where you can go to ask questions, get answers, and help out other students at your school. We hope the new organization of the discussion boards will make this easier than ever.
And we encourage you to get the ball rolling by responding to this thread and telling us what you think!
Ari Schulman
ClassPoint Founder
ClassPoint was originally started as a discussion center for college students. We especially had in mind those 500-person freshman-year classes that can be so easy to get lost in if you don't know where to go for help. Keeping that original goal in mind, we've completely overhauled our forums to be much easier to use and to help you connect with more of your classmates.
Course Forums
First, we realized that the forums were too narrowly focused on particular courses taught during particular semesters. So we've grouped all of the forums for each course together. So, for example, while UT's Chemistry 301 course taught by Dr. Laude in Fall 2008 used to have its own forum, it's now combined with every other Chemistry 301 section offered by UT. Now students can easily look back on discussions from previous semesters, and people considering whether to take a course can look in one place to get a feel for what it's like.
Department and School Forums
We also realized that discussions shouldn't be restricted to course-related topics. Sometimes you might want to start a discussion or post a question that pertains to your whole department or school, and you want many people to be able to read it. So, we've created forums for each department and school.
New discussion pages
The new forum and discussion pages are much cleaner and more intuitively organized than the old versions. They should offer an easy way to browse a large number of discussions and post in them. Hopefully the new layout will speak for itself:
---
And we've made watching forums and threads easier than ever with the options panel above any forum or thread. Watching a discussion will put it in the "Your watched forums" panel, and the discussion or forum will be highlighted whenever there is a new post:
Cleaner navigation menus
We realized that our old navigation menus were getting cluttered with lists of features, and were not usefully organized. So we've moved a few things around, and introduced drop-down menus, so that you can still quickly get to your favorite features without having to search for them:
Sharing
We've now made it easier than ever to share your course schedule or anything from ClassPoint at all. You can now use the "Share" dropdown menu on the planner to share your schedule using Facebook or a permanent link, without ever having to leave the page:
And you can now share any page from ClassPoint via Facebook, Digg, or email, by using the "share" menu at the top of any page:
Finally, so you can tell us what you think...
We've added forums to discuss ClassPoint itself. We will use these to announce future updates, but you can also use them to post questions, comments or feedback.
We started ClassPoint not just to offer the best course features around, but to be a community where you can go to ask questions, get answers, and help out other students at your school. We hope the new organization of the discussion boards will make this easier than ever.
And we encourage you to get the ball rolling by responding to this thread and telling us what you think!
Ari Schulman
ClassPoint Founder
