Guys, we want to start a webinar series for our parents community and I wanted to first get your thoughts on it.
I want this to be run by some of the Parents Cafe folks. We would form a core team that is in charge of the initiative. This team will be picking the weekly topic (anything college related that parents are interested in) and vetting panelists (parents can ask beforehand to share their experiences during the live session). We will provide the logistics (promotion, registration, a Zoom conf call, etc.).
The big goal is to encourage parents to parents conversations in a meaningful and valuable way. We want to leverage the extremely helpful parents community on the site and have them share their experiences and knowledge with other parents (not so much with students). We’ve been doing a lot of student focused initiatives and we want to make sure we give parents their needed attention, too.
Here’s how I envision this (please see this as an example):
We have a core team of 3-5 parents. We decide to host the webinar series let’s say every Tuesday at 7pm ET. There will be a registration form for participants. Once you register you can attend all recurring events (until you cancel). We pick the topic for the first session (something like “Being a parent affected by the COVID-19 pandemic: Concerns, Challenges, Opportunities”). The core team has confirmed with 3-5 parents that will be speaking during the live session about their experience. They can get questions before the event and have them addressed during the live session. If someone has a valid point to share, the core team (that will be moderating the live session) can grant speaking rights to the person so they are added to the panel. The live Zoom session will be recorded and shared on our social platforms.
Let me know your thoughts!
Also, we are looking for parents to volunteer for the core team. We search for members who have a reputed reputation, are neutral and friendly, and are passionate about working with other parents to provide meaningful support for our parents community. Let me know if you are interested in the opportunity! Thanks a lot!
Just a suggestion to change up the time so you are making it convenient for those in other time zones. 7 ET on a Tuesday means those of us in other parts of the US will still be working.
I don’t mind helping out by answering questions on an anonymous message board, much less keen to take an hour+ of my time, which benefits CC’s owners and doesn’t benefit me. The way you describe this sounds like we would be working for CC, but not getting paid. Sorry to be a bit cynical, and I could be alone, but I thought you should hear all perspectives.
Personally I find there are a million webinars from the schools etc and by their nature they have to be fairly general. I’m not interested in generic advice, (giving or receiving) myself, though I see that someone just starting the process might find it useful.
Good luck, I do think it is good that you are trying out new ideas.
@cinnamon1212, while I appreciate the honest feedback (I think that always helpful and we should listen to it), I want to address some of the comments to better explain what the initiative is about.
We have thought about this initiative as beneficial for our parents community. We opted to have a core team of members lead it (instead of the CC admins) so that we empower parents to actively influence the outcome, i.e. pick the right topics, right panelists, set the best recurring time, etc.
This is not meant to “benefit the CC owners.”
@cinnamon1212, the intent is to pick topics that the parents community on CC wants to talk about. I’m hoping parents can share their experiences, give advice, and offer support so the sessions are not “generic.”
I’m imagining users can log in using their username or be anonymous but I can confirm this internally and will get back. I know this is something CC members value so we’ll find a way to accommodate for it.
I mean, you already know some of the topics that the parent community wants to talk about, and have (no offense) censored those.
ETA: Let me clarify - the typical model of a parent on CC is that s/he joins about his/her own child and answers/asks some questions pertinent to that child, then gets interested in other threads, which keep the parent coming back. While reading the active parent cafe threads of interest, many helpful parents then pop in on topics they know about, lending that credibility and expertise that this Webinar idea is trying to harness.
I think some of us are upset that the powers-that-be at CC are very happy to monetize our free help/advice/expertise, while removing the threads we most wanted to participate in as our (now) best reason to come back to CC in the first place.
When parents stop deriving immediate benefit for their own children, the only reason they would stay (and give valuable advice) is if something else, i.e. the community and topics of interest, is desirable to them.
And, TBH, if parents here want to discuss a topic, they seem to be pretty good at starting a thread about it. IMO, it’s much easier to read and post at one’s convenience than to have to log into yet another zoom meeting. How well attended have the student “ask me anything” zoom meetings been?
I think it’s great that CC is trying something new to engage the parents.
And for the millionth time, it’s quite a few users who were to blame for the COVID thread being shut down. I tried babysitting it diligently for weeks and weeks and it was exhausting. And although some people are fine with insults and inappropriate posts, others are not. It is NOT CC’s fault that the thread was closed. Sigh.
@MaineLonghorn it must be difficult and time consuming to be a moderator, and you have my thanks for being one.
As I mentioned on another thread, I also read a horse forum associated with the magazine The Chronicle of The Horse. Horsepeople are, at a minimum, opinionated strong personalities, and many would say, crazy. Nevertheless, they have managed a vibrant community with good (and paid) moderation AND discussion of a wide variety of topics, including COVID. Their non-horse subforum is called “Off Topic” and in order to see it you have to be a registered user(because they had non-horsepeople joining just to harrass those threads). COTH (as it is known) is thriving and has done so for decades now. While I’m glad the Admins are thinking about ways to improve CC, I also hope they are analyzing other message boards to see what the most successful among them are doing.
I have found CC to be a fantastic resource, full of interesting, educated people and I hope it can navigate the current circumstances.
I’m still scratching my head over this initiative. Parents who participate here obviously like the message board format. Why would it be better to have webinars?
“The core team has confirmed with 3-5 parents that will be speaking during the live session about their experience. They can get questions before the event and have them addressed during the live session. If someone has a valid point to share, the core team (that will be moderating the live session) can grant speaking rights to the person so they are added to the panel. The live Zoom session will be recorded and shared on our social platforms.”
It seems like CC thinks parents need to participate in a more “controlled” way? The core team plus the approved panel with pre-submitted questions = a lot of control.
Is this for the current participants in the Cafe, or are you really looking to get a lot more parents involved by recording the sessions and sharing them on your social platforms?
And, one more question – did posters on this forum say that they want this sort of thing?
I am not sure about this initiative. Perhaps offering a links forum to pre existing content that has been scrubbed by category. Like a drudge or huff post connects back to content.
It may be helpful to expand some parental background information and cv for more specific areas of expertise. You have super mods. Forum champions. Maybe there can be senior members with certain approved and verified background info. You only do this is you choose. It might highlight some posts as being from someone with expertise in a field.
Financial expertise.
Ivy experience.
Merit and scholarships.
Educator.
Admissions professional.
Professors.
Medical doctor.
Psychological counselor.
Liberal Arts parent.
Catholic schools.
Med School parent. Etc.
@CTTC, we thought of this initiative as a way to leverage all the great expertise of the CC parents so that it’s helpful for any parent that comes to the site for guidance. It’s meant to be “more controlled” in the sense that we will have a predefined topic for each session and the panelists are confirmed beforehand.
We also want to increase the reach of those discussions by sharing the content to our social media channels.
I want this initiative to be run by a core group of parents so that they can “control” the outcome. However, I am more than happy to take the lead on the first session and see how it goes.
@CCadmin_Sorin , I am still curious about how the response was when you tried this with the “ ask me anything” zooms. Didn’t you try that? How did it go? Was there much interest? How many attended?
@MaineLonghorn it must be difficult and time consuming to be a moderator, and you have my thanks for being one.
As I mentioned on another thread, I also read a horse forum associated with the magazine The Chronicle of The Horse. Horsepeople are, at a minimum, opinionated strong personalities, and many would say, crazy. Nevertheless, they have managed a vibrant community with good (and paid) moderation AND discussion of a wide variety of topics, including COVID. Their non-horse subforum is called “Off Topic” and in order to see it you have to be a registered user(because they had non-horsepeople joining just to ■■■■■ those threads). COTH (as it is known) is thriving and has done so for decades now. While I’m glad the Admins are thinking about ways to improve CC, I also hope they are analyzing other message boards to see what the most successful among them are doing.
I have found CC to be a fantastic resource, full of interesting, educated people and I hope it can navigate the current circumstances.
@MaineLonghorn it must be difficult and time consuming to be a moderator, and you have my thanks for being one.
As I mentioned on another thread, I also read a horse forum associated with the magazine The Chronicle of The Horse. Horsepeople are, at a minimum, opinionated strong personalities, and many would say, crazy. Nevertheless, they have managed a vibrant community with good (and paid) moderation AND discussion of a wide variety of topics, including COVID. Their non-horse subforum is called “Off Topic” and in order to see it you have to be a registered user(because they had non-horsepeople joining just to ■■■■■ those threads). COTH (as it is known) is thriving and has done so for decades now. While I’m glad the Admins are thinking about ways to improve CC, I also hope they are analyzing other message boards to see what the most successful among them are doing.
I have found CC to be a fantastic resource, full of interesting, educated people and I hope it can navigate the current circumstances.
