Feature Request - Collaboration Mode for Lessons

Summary:

Make a "collaboration mode" (similar to what you can do in Google Docs) where users can read each other's OPLingo lesson (by invitation) and check each other's OPLingo translations and suggest translations which might be more accurate.

Long Version:

It seems to be popular for websites, including OPLingo, to have a section of the site devoted to Writing Collaboration/Exchanges. Although personally I think a feature that would be WAY cooler and increase motivation amongst OPlingo members is if two or more people could access a OPLingolesson and collaborate on it by personal invitation, by open invitation, or a "team" style where a closed team of people work together on OPlingo lessons together. By this I mean, multiple people could make OPlingo links on the same lesson which would be helpful if, for example, I'm studying a lesson full of deep slang and I could invite other users studying the same language, native speakers of the language on OPlingo, or language tutors on OPlingoto look at my translations and check if my translations/interpretations are correct. Also if I could check the other users chosen translations for any word in the lesson that might not be highlighted would be great. This would expand on what makes OPlingo so valuable to me which is "Popular Translations" submitted by the OPlingo users and the Community/Forum and marries them together. These translations are sometimes very context specific and don't always work. And I'm not able to work on OPlingo lessons with members, only discuss language learning tips in the forum. It would be way cooler if we could work together on lessons on the interpretation/translation.

This could be expanded in different ways,:

1. I'm an English tutor and I'm always trying to get my students to sign up for OPlingo. Unfortunately they never do because to them they never take the time to figure out how to use it and I can't waste their lesson time trying to explain it nor do they watch any tutorials about it. So to get around this stubbornness what I do instead is I download a transcript and load it into a Google Spreadsheet and I essentially make them "OPlingo" words/phrases in the spreadsheet and then I can collaborate/check on it later with them. But even if they did sign up for OPlingo, I can't look at their lessons and highlights to discuss words/phrases they don't understand even after checking dictionaries or popular translations. We could only do this if we do a share screen. So I would actually suggest a teacher mode for this too where even a guest with a free membership could make unlimited highlights for ONLY individual lessons they are invited to and the teacher (the pro OPlingo user) can look through it and check it. I know this could inspire my students to sign up for memberships after getting used to the system and probably desiring the ability to be able to track stats and save their highlights.

2. Also I think this could make more of a purpose for the "Follow" feature of the site which seems a little pointless beyond just checking other's stats. But if to "Follow" someone meant getting access to their OPlingo lessons by default and I could read through the same lesson they did and check their OPlingo and their translations and even suggest translations I think are more accurate than what they chose I think this could be a great community feature. The "suggestion" mode could be a nuisance and maybe too much so it's probably best left to what I mentioned previously for invite collaboration or team mode but seeing other people highlights and/or their chose translation for words/phrases would be very cool.

Beyond the 2 additional ideas for now I'm most interested in people in the OPlingo community being able to colloborate with each other on OPlingo lessons via invite or a team mode. I think this would really boost community participation and create cool long lasting relationships connected to the site.

Thanks Stewart. We will discuss this.

Thanks for the reply Leo! Always appreciate your quick responses. Keep up the good work. To give some context, I suggested this feature on LingQ and nobody from the Dev team paid attention. In fact feature requests are often ignored there. I always check OPLingo and see how fast you develop features and fix issues. So I've been mentioning OPLingo there to anyone with a feature request to come check here or make the request here because your professionalism is very impressive.

Thank you for the compliment.

I’m looking over your suggestion more carefully, and thinking it is unlikely we will be able to do it at this time due to lack of budget. But I may be wrong – let me try to clarify some points.

First, you probably know about the following, but I want to make sure you are aware of what the current tools can do, in case it happens to be enough for you. You can create a passage (I think you are calling them lessons in your post) and make it public. If you do, others can read and copy it. They can edit their copies and save them publicly. We also have write & correct, where native speakers, or others, can correct an essay that you post. It redlines and can show before and after versions. Regarding showing others how to join and use OPLingo, there is a FAQ and videos for all functions. Regarding translations being context specific – are you translating at the phrase level? That would make them less likely to depend on context. I often translate a whole phrase, if a single word definition doesn’t appear to work, just to get that single word definition. Also, a few passages have full translations. There is place for them on the RH side.

Next, going through your post and asking questions.

Reading each other’s passages; are you suggesting creating a new category of passage – not public or private, but “team”?

Inviting members – are you suggesting creating a new button on the profile page – not friend, but “team member”? And that’s how you would create your team?

Checking to see which words are giving people problems – how would this work? Some sort of a note system like google docs?

Checking each other’s translations – are you talking about full translations, or words and phrases? And like above – how would this work?

Finally, who do you think would use this? Unless I’ve misunderstood, it seems like something for teachers only. Do you think individuals would form teams to write or translate passages? Or is it to create subs or something?  I ask because I can’t see myself doing this – that doesn’t make it wrong, but to implement this I want to feel like there is a demand.