PO Academy: Revival

Discussion in 'PO Academy' started by Raducan, May 28, 2015.

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  1. Raducan

    Raducan Well-Known Member

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    So as many of you know, the PO Academy has been dead for some time now. This isn't really anyone's fault, the interest in this program just wasn't there anymore so here we are to try and renew that interest. I am going to use this thread as a way to gather opinions and suggestions in order to make the program better and more efficient.

    Here are some discussion points to get us started:
    • Should tutors integrate the concept of tiering into their tutoring?
    • How important is it for the Academy Headmaster to check up on tutors / tutees regularly in order to make sure that everything is going well?
    • How much could well-known members of the community such as tier leaders and tournament players affect the interest in the program?
    • How should the Tutor badge be given out? Should it be given out immediately once the tutor is approved? Should it be given out once the tutor has demonstrated that they have been successful in their teaching?
    Those are just some of the things that you can discuss. The key to reviving this program is community involvement and input so if you have something to bring up that would potentially improve this program, please do.
     
  2. Zoroark

    Zoroark Stay Firm Forum Moderator Server Moderator Forum Moderator Server Moderator

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    • Should tutors integrate the concept of tiering into their tutoring?
    Yes, I think one of the most important concepts in Competitive battle pretty much that one. I have seen many users ask "What is a tier?" and most of the people can't answer this question accurately, so every qualified tutor must have a very clear concept of what Tiering is, in order to introduce the tutee in further competitive battle topics and probably preparing them to take part in suspect threads.
    • How important is it for the Academy Headmaster to check up on tutors / tutees regularly in order to make sure that everything is going well?
    From what I can see, it is logical that the one who is in charge of the Academy also watches over the performance of the tutor with their tutees, in order to give them proper feedback regarding their tutoring skills. This way ensures that the tutees are understanding the concepts and enhancing their skills, so that they trace their path in the competitive battle community, in other words, hella important.
    • How much could well-known members of the community such as tier leaders and tournament players affect the interest in the program?
    I think Well-Known players, Tier Leaders and Tournament players could be seen by newcomers and non experienced players as a role-model, thus motivating them to be part of an Academy in which they can see the people they [probably] admire or have respect for. Of course, this is assuming both parts have equal interest in the program.
    • How should the Tutor badge be given out? Should it be given out immediately once the tutor is approved? Should it be given out once the tutor has demonstrated that they have been successful in their teaching?
    From what I think, it should be given once the tutor has proven that their tutoring skills are good enough to "create" decent competitive players. I don't think it's logical to reward someone with something without testing their skills and knowledge beforehand. This could be determined by the Academy Headmaster, with their supervision, they can tell if the tutor is worth the badge or not.

    Beep this is all I got.
     
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  3. Lutra

    Lutra All Gen Battler/Scripter

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    In my opinion, there should be a tutor and tutee forum with a sticky guidelines on how each side can get the best out of each other, such as a tutee expressing what they want to learn in some detail and a tutor going over the basics and trying to pinpoint what the tutee wants to know. No requirements, just suggestions. Tiering could be one of the points in the tutor guidelines.

    What's more, it makes no sense to me for tutor and tutee forums to be hidden, complete transparency please.

    Also, please list clearly the tiers that are available to the tutees, either by delaying the tutee signups to after the tutors have signed up each round, or just going the Smogon way.

    Additionally, I think an inspector/supervisor role could be introduced for experienced current or former tutors to help the Academy Headmaster with managing the tutoring system.

    I guess tutoring badges should be given out for scoring high in a league table. The tricky part is how to collect each part of the final score/rating. With tutees just rating tutors out of 10 in certain categories, I feel you will come across a few problems: personality clashes, people giving high scores as to not upset the tutor and people just who generally like to give scores 5 and above out of 10, in order not to stand out too much.

    The important thing is to make the tutor system more innovative and better than Smogon's, the main competition, which will in turn make PO's tutor badge valuable.
     
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  4. Weavile

    Weavile Phoenix

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    A project like this is all about investment. Fostering some kind of investment in the project usually means making people think they'll gain something good from it. In this case you're "selling" battling knowledge and expertise and the tutor's investment comes from somewhere I couldn't hope to understand. Presumably some form of pride in teaching someone. I can't claim to understand something I don't personally have.

    I quite like Lutra's idea of a guide to get the most out of the process. I couldn't personally write something like this though as I've never been part of the process and I don't understand myself how to make the best of it. The way someone would know that is through prior experience with teaching Pokémon or something similar. So not sure who could write that.

    I think checking up on tutors and tutees is essential. The way we did it before we trusted tutors to record their sessions in the tutor subforum (which by the way should be public) and then took that as a measure of their activity, I think that's a good idea and it can record activity fairly well since if you just invested in a session of teaching, a couple minutes to copy paste a few logs isn't much trouble. As for additional monitoring. I really don't see how it can be done, I mean you could have people nag tutors or tutees but sometimes people just can't find time at the same time and there's not a lot that can be done about that, or if one participant just isn't engaging, primarily I mean the tutee here, the tutor should be engaging or just be replaced. Tutees can be kicked out but then you have to find a replacement late enough into a session to know someone isn't investing, which might be quite late.

    What I think is the biggest weakness of Pokémon teaching is also one of its biggest strong points, that being the completely un-structured nature of the teaching, not only is it free form in what order things are presented but each tutor has their own ideas about how to do things in the game and they will teach something differently from the next tutor. This makes any form of teaching inconsistent and it also makes it difficult to know if you're teaching "the right things". But we can't really solve that in any good way.

    Tutor badge should be for tutors that have demonstrated that they invested in their tutee. Perhaps it's more nebulous when the tutee doesn't invest and they can't accomplish much, but that can be addressed as and when it happens.

    The tutor's renown is what draws people in, in some cases at least. But primarily I would say it's simply the promise of being taught. The mere fact that they are a tutor is enough for most people if they don't know players very well. Of course I'd hold tutors to a higher standard than that but the draw of names isn't all that strong for new users since many of them don't know anybody.
     
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  5. Oh So Penspin

    Oh So Penspin Hail RNGesus, our Lord and Saviour!

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    • Should tutors integrate the concept of tiering into their tutoring?
    Yes, I think they should. Many new people are unaware of the tiering system used in competitive Pokemon, which usually results in them using sub-par Pokemon. This leads, in combination with little experience, to few won battles and really reduces the fun and willingness to learn more. Even for more experienced players this would be a good idea; while they might know a lot about one tier, I feel it's important to stress that they should also play other tiers, as it will greatly improve their knowledge of the overal game.
    • How important is it for the Academy Headmaster to check up on tutors / tutees regularly in order to make sure that everything is going well?
    At the start of the project it is probably the most important. If the Academy is revamped completely, it's is natural that not everything goes smoothly in the beginnen. Close monitoring to ensure quality is vital then. Later, when the Academy is running and experienced tutors know their way around, it will be less important to monitor. However, discussion how to impove the Academy should then be encouraged.
    • How much could well-known members of the community such as tier leaders and tournament players affect the interest in the program?
    A LOT. This is almost a requirement for success, as newer players will see these names often. From my experience, there are quite some excellent tournament players which could make excellent tutors; not only do they know how to battle, they are also knowledgeble of the community (and usually very nice people too).
    • How should the Tutor badge be given out? Should it be given out immediately once the tutor is approved? Should it be given out once the tutor has demonstrated that they have been successful in their teaching?
    I'd split this into two badges; one for all tutors, so that new players can see who they can ask questions to, and another one for excellent tutors, who have proven theirselves and can possibly function as mentors to newer tutors.
     
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  6. Finchinator

    Finchinator IT’S FINK DUMBASS

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    I'll precursor this by saying that the biggest point I want to make is in my answer to the last question (about badges) as it gives an incentive to prospective contributors, which is the best way to form a new foundation for the academy and revive it in general.

    Honestly, I don't think it should be a requirement to teach tiering and etiquette, but it wouldn't be a bad thing to add. I would say that making it optional and then assigning tutors to tutees based on if a tutor is willing to teach tiering and etiquette and if a tutee desires to learn tiering and etiquette.

    I think it is necessary given the fact that there are a lot of people doing this for the badge or with an initial goal of contributing and then become lazy or simply forgetful. This would ensure the programs' effectiveness and also help gague the amount of effort a tutor put in to helping a tutee.

    In regards to this actually being done, either a sub forum where all parties have access to and may use when called-for or a forum conversation between every tutee-tutor pair that also has the headmaster in it.

    I mean, there is obviously some room to give personal advertisements or mentions of the academy in order to raise awareness and some hype for the academy, sure, but I think the academy would have to build a solid foundation again and have a certain amount of people interested in helping prior to any advertisements or expansion of the academy is even considered. Hyping up something that shouldn't be hyped isn't a smart idea, so this should be backseated until everything else is dealt with and the academy is started up again.

    The badge should be given out after one round of being a successful tutor. Right now we will need as much contribution as possible and this is a fair incentive to provoke contribution. However, I want to stress what I mean by being a successful tutor - it means that the headmaster has tracked their progress and believe that they have put in sufficient effort and got fair results from their tutee. If a tutor's tutee is inactive, they should be given the badge, but it should be watched closely and if they don't do well in the next round, taken back until the tutor proves to be up to par in a future round. Alumn badge should be given after three or so rounds of successful tutoring, leaving prospective tutors with an incentive to stick around for a while which works well in conjunction with the initial incentive to sign up and contribute of getting a badge after one successful round. This is the best way to do things for the academy if we want to revive it.

    I would like to bring up the prospect of - if we get enough tutees - post-round tutee tournaments that could be treated like a forum ladder challenge with the winner getting a badge thing until the next round has a different winner. This gives tutees motivation to improve and adds a bit of fun and competition into the mix, which is always a bonus!
     
  7. Oh So Penspin

    Oh So Penspin Hail RNGesus, our Lord and Saviour!

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    I second the idea of having tournament for (post-)tutees. It makes people stick around longer and it's fun to play vs. people of your level, especially if they've all been through the same process.
     
  8. Disaster Area

    Disaster Area Badged Deucer

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    How does a (post-)tutee tournament work though when players are tutored in different tiers? That's one thing I don't really understand. If there's a sensible solution to that though, sounds great.
     
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  9. Finchinator

    Finchinator IT’S FINK DUMBASS

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    Hopefully we would get to do one solely for OU tutees. Regardless, we could group tutees over the last couple rounds if we don't get enough and there is always the idea of a best of three tournament with one tier in one tutees' tier, one in the other tutees' tier, and one in an agreed upon tier with OU being the default if they cannot reach an agreement or soemthing like that!
     
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  10. pokemonnerd

    pokemonnerd Only uso listens to pnerd. Devo too. Article Contributor Article Contributor

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    Finch seems to have good ideas on getting people interested in tutoring in the first place so I'll be commenting on other areas.
    • Should tutors integrate the concept of tiering into their tutoring?
    If they feel like they should during tutoring the tutee then yes, however I feel like this should be purely up to the discretion on the tutor's part. You can tell if someone knows how suspects and general tiering works by asking them a few simple questions, and otherwise a brief synopsis on how it works is really enough to get to work on actually improving the tutee's skill and knowledge.

    • How important is it for the Academy Headmaster to check up on tutors / tutees regularly in order to make sure that everything is going well?
    Honestly at the start it's not that vital; it's after they get the badge where it logically becomes mandatory to watch how tutors teach their tutees. That way if they do what whoever is in charge deems "a bad job," then we can just take the badge away either permanently or, much more likely, until the tutor does an acceptable job in teaching their tutee. This is, of course, assuming we give most tutors the badge after their first cycle of teaching.

    • How much could well-known members of the community such as tier leaders and tournament players affect the interest in the program?
    I'd like to take this question and go in another direction: having tier leaders participate as tutors simply looks good for the program without even actively trying to hype it up. It also looks good on us in general; if none of our tier leaders want to tutor, how would that really look? Like we have people who aren't invested in our community or just don't think they're good enough to teach other people, thus being able to conclude they're not a good choice for leading a tier. At least from the outside a number of people could draw that conclusion. Not every single tier leader has to be willing(if they are that's fine of course!), but it would be nice to see one from every main tier.

    And as for other points, such as...

    • Being a "successful tutor" means:
    In my eyes, it would mean that your tutee is an all around better player. Honestly besides succeeding more in the ladder and winning a tournament or two, how much a tutee improves is pretty subjective, and one of the most objective ways of going about this would be for the headmaster to get the tutees to rate their tutors and how much they(tutees) think they have improved. After all, they're the ones who will be deciding whether being tutored was worth it, as all the headmaster can do is simply track activity and see end results. This isn't like a school where we have grades and definite results we can follow either, since after a certain point luck influences battling only a little less than skill does in the grand scheme of the game.

    • How to teach correctly
    There is no right way and if you think there is you've already failed at tutoring before you've even begun. Everyone has a different teaching and learning style, and ultimately it is up to the tutor to be able to adapt to the tutee, at least until they've grown to a certain level in their understanding of the game and battling.
     
  11. Raducan

    Raducan Well-Known Member

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    The Academy Lounge is now public!
     
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  12. Raducan

    Raducan Well-Known Member

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    Thank you to everyone who participated in this thread and offered their opinions to improve this program.

    The new tutor/tutee guidelines will be up shortly. If you have any questions about them, feel free to contact me. Shoutout to Weavile for helping with these.
     
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