Ian Cox from TJEd fosters student engagement in their Thinkific classroom with PeerBoard
Community Building: Ian Cox from TJEd fosters student engagement in their Thinkific classroom with PeerBoard
“Our purpose is to connect with as many individuals as possible to inspire them, to lead them, to mentor them, to help them in getting an education that matches their mission, whatever they were created to accomplish while living on this Earth” — Ian Cox, TJEd.
Ian Cox joined TJEd about eight years ago as an intern and fell absolutely in love with the educational approach that The DeMilles have developed.
The principles that guide their team today are aimed at revealing the leadership potential in every student by mentoring them in a way they can own their education. Ian believes that every one of us comes into this world with a mission; and the purpose of education is to give students the required skillset and ignite their passion for learning to uncover that mission and work towards achieving it.
“It’s the role of the teacher to inspire the students – at whatever age, whatever level – it’s to inspire them to own their own education.”
TJEd’s team has identified the importance of having long-form discussions in an online classroom right from the onset. It has taken them a few years before they have found the right solution that serves their students best — PeerBoard.
Until then, they had tried multiple open-source forums, which had been good but lacked support and the ‘personability’, as Ian calls it, or the human connection.
After that, they had switched to Facebook and grown their student community up to 13,500 students in a private group. Yet, as it is with every social media, students had never fully engaged, got distracted or left a few word comments.
“For building a community, for building an educational approach, we knew we needed that basic forum that would allow students to get wordy and then to be able to respond to each other and keep track of it.”
That is when TJEd decided to test PeerBoard and became early adopters of the beta version of their Thinkific app. They discovered that their student community could then live on their Thinkific site, automatically turn their students into community members and host private discussion spaces. It became the place where students faced the positive peer pressure and followed their lead by sharing their reflections on the reading and asking for advice from mentors. Above all, there was the human connection of which the other forums were devoid.
“This is a very involved team and they work very quickly and very efficiently.”
Since then, they have been actively promoting their PeerBoard Community in their Facebook Group, gradually transferring their student groups to their Thinkific site.
Watch the interview above to learn the full story!
“I was very impressed with how quick and how efficient, and how communicative the PeerBoard team was through that process. It made me a very loyal user of PeerBoard.”
Quick Stats:
15,000 – 20,000 students
13,500 students transitioning from Facebook Group to PeerBoard
150 – 200 current students in the PeerBoard community
70 average daily visit in the PeerBoard community
35 average weekly posts created by students in the PeerBoard community
TJEd uses the PeerBoard Community app for Thinkific for the seamless & engaging community experience.
Benefits:
-
Community is part of the Thinkific site
-
Easy access to the Thinkific site & the community (SSO, no additional account needed)
-
Automatic student import to the community
-
Discussion spaces & subspaces
-
Private discussion spaces (30 in the Professional plan)
-
Advanced customization
-
Search in posts & comments
-
and so much more!
Install the PeerBoard Community app today & start an exciting community around your course business!
Written by Kseniia Burilova
April 27, 2022
Related Articles
Best Shopify Apps to Increase Sales
How to Create a Thriving Slack Community
