Three day head start for basic students who don't yet have 3 climbs
Good afternoon Jeff,
Jim Nelson asked that I get in contact with you about a website feature we would like to explore in support of the Basic Climbing Course. We would like for the website to be able to flag Basic Course students who have not yet completed three climbs and give them a three-day head start in signing up for Basic climbs. As soon as a student has three successful climbs, the flag comes off and they have the same priority in signing up for climbs as prior-year Basic course graduates.
This change addresses two long-simmering concerns:
- It gives students who have yet to complete the three-climb requirement for graduation a leg up in signing up for climbs and improves their ability to get three climbs.
- It puts prior year Basic Course graduates on equal footing with current year Basic Course students who have already completed the three-climb requirement, improving their chances of getting on climbs.
Our thinking is that prior-year Basic Course graduates and current-year Basic Course students who already have three climbs are equally likely to seek additional basic climbs and advance to the Intermediate Course. This revised website functionality might keep prior-year Basic Course graduates more active in our climbing community and might encourage them to move forward with the Intermediate Course, climb leadership, etc. Also, it is our guess that this functionality change would not dampen the enthusiasm of highly motivated current-year Basic Course students for seeking additional basic climbs and moving forward to the Intermediate Course.
Best,
Bill Ashby
(206) 852 3008 (mobile)
Bill Ashby
shared this idea
Changing from DECLINED to CLOSED to follow the improved and streamlined feedback status options: https://www.mountaineers.org/blog/new-technology-experience-manager-feedback-management-improvements
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Yvonne Rhodes
commented
Implementing a feature that gives Basic Course students who haven’t completed three climbs a head start in the sign-up process is a thoughtful approach to address the concerns you’ve outlined. Here’s a high-level overview of how this could be achieved technically:
Student Climb Status Tracking: The website would need https://www.my-milestonecard.com a system to track the number of successful climbs each student has completed.
Priority Sign-Up Feature: A feature that allows students with less than three climbs to have early access to sign-up for new climbs.
Flag Removal Automation: Once a student completes three climbs, the system would automatically remove their priority access.
This functionality would require backend changes to the database to track climb counts and frontend changes to enforce the sign-up rules. It’s important to ensure that the changes are communicated clearly to all users to maintain transparency and fairness in the sign-up process.
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Rob Busack
commented
I like this idea, and I've added my votes to it.
It's an interesting approach to the delicate climb scarcity problem, which is described here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/g55aem43is3lajo/Climb%20Scarcity.rtf?dl=0
I would suggest a slightly modified implementation though: once a Basic student in need of credit has registered for five climbs, then they should lose their 3-day head start. Otherwise, there's a loophole where a Basic student would have no limit to the number of climbs they could sign up for using this 3-day head start, as long as they did so before the third climb actually completes. For example, if a student's third successful climb is in August, and they start registering for climbs in April, it sounds like they'll continue to get the 3-day head start even if they sign up for 10 or 20 different climbs, as long as they sign up before August. I don't think we want that loophole, so I suggest only allowing the 3-day head start as long as they're registered for fewer than 5 future climb rosters.
- Rob Busack