May Announcements
May Announcements
Happy Tuesday everyone! We hope you had a great weekend! Since Marat and I were both out of the office yesterday, we’re kicking off your weekly announcements today.
We are so impressed by the excitement and engagement in this community. It’s wonderful seeing photos from study groups all over the world, including lots of virtual sessions, which proves that you don’t need to live near other people to benefit from this incredible community! Keep uploading these to Facebook so this momentum stays strong as we move through the remaining 2+ months of the challenge course!
Interested in starting or joining a group project? Great! Remember, group projects aren't required for phase 1, but they're a great way to challenge yourself and engage with your peers. If you are confused about how to do this, we recommend:
Remember that any announcements posted in Slack will also be shared here on the scholarship website under the announcements tab. If you haven’t bookmarked this page yet, save it now! Information here won’t expire, so it’s a great place to go to find key updates, especially since Slack, the forums, and Facebook can be difficult to keep up with.
Thanks to @dzebs for putting together a detailed Slack guide that goes into more depth on how to use Slack, complete with screenshots to help you learn what's what. This guide will also be permanently linked on the “How To Slack” page here on the scholarship website. If you still feel unsure about how to navigate Slack, please read through this!
Thanks everyone, and we hope this is another great week!
Happy Friday (or should we say Fri-yay?) everyone! We hope you had a great week, and have some announcements to close it out!
Marat and Kathleen will both be out of the office on Monday, May 28, so you may experience slightly slower follow-up, especially if you post things over the weekend. If you have any time-sensitive questions, try asking your peers, and otherwise Kathleen will be back on Tuesday, and Marat on Wednesday.
I know I said earlier this week that we would group you and create channels by EOD today, but we got a LOT of interest from students, and are unable to roll this out today. We deeply apologize for the delay with this, and thank you for your patience! We’ll share these out by the middle of next week. If you’ve already started working with your study group, please continue to do so- you do not need a formal go-ahead from us to get started! And remember, *check the calendar* to see if there are already study groups scheduled that you're interested in attending!
Please make sure your Slack email matches your classroom email, which should be the same as the email you used to apply to the scholarship. Email consistency ensures that we can track your participation across all platforms! If you had to change your classroom email since receiving the scholarship, please DM Marat or Kathleen so we can update our records.
We’re still seeing a lot of channel replies instead of in threads, and posts in inappropriate channels. Please do your best to post in the correct places to keep this space neat, and if you see someone else posting in the incorrect area, feel free to kindly remind them where to post.
When sharing images, we ask that you post the image and the comment *separately*, so people can reply to your comment in thread (Slack does not currently support threaded replies to images).
We’re still troubleshooting the time zone issue in the calendar; most are appearing correctly, but for now, please continue to cross-reference the Bertelsmann Meetups spreadsheet when you see a study session or event on the calendar that you want to attend to confirm the time.
Remember, you can find announcements, FAQs, the calendar, and more here on the website!
Have a great weekend everyone, and we’ll see you on Tuesday!
Hi everyone, welcome to week 3 of your scholarship! We are so excited that only 3 days after launching the calendar, there were already 50 study sessions scheduled, and over 60 entries to find a study group! It’s amazing to see how excited everyone is to connect so early on, and we’re looking forward to continuing to see that number grow! #bettertogether
A few announcements and reminders to kick off your week:
Please DO NOT add tabs, change content that someone else created, or edit permissions on any docs that are shared with you. We have opened edit permissions to several docs to facilitate sharing of ideas, and we have noticed some changes being made to the documents’ structure without notification. If you have suggestions for how to improve the way we use these documents, please DM Marat or Kathleen so we can incorporate your feedback. Thank you!
As you schedule study groups and other events, please fill out this form so they get added to the student calendar.
It’s wonderful to see your faces in the Facebook album!! Seeing your photos makes this huge and spread out community feel so much cozier!!
Find a Study Group (reminder)
Marat and Kathleen will group people into their study groups based on the "Find a Study Group" spreadsheet on Wednesday and Thursday, and will roll out these new groups and create any necessary channels by Friday, May 25.
Facebook Norms (reminder)
A reminder that moving forward, Facebook should be used for sharing events, posting links/supplemental resources related to course material, sharing career-related updates or resources, and posting photos from study groups/meetups with other students
Hi everyone, congratulations on finishing week 2 of your scholarship! We’re so excited to see all the energy surrounding the course so far, and we know many of you are hungry for more ways to engage with your peers. We are excited to roll out some new programs out this week to facilitate the great connections you’ve already started making on your own!
There’s a LOT of information here, but please read through thoroughly so you don’t miss anything!
Bertelsmann Student Calendar
There is now a dynamic calendar up and running on the website. Come here to quickly find the AMA schedule, study groups, and events happening near you.
NOTE: TIMES WILL APPEAR IN UTC.
To view events in the correct time, click on the event title, and then click “copy to my calendar”. It should automatically adjust to the correct time once you add it to your calendar.
Sharing Study Groups and Events
It’s great to see how many people have already started meeting up! You now can add your study groups and other planned events directly to the calendar by filling out this form.
Please fill this out for any meet-ups you are organizing so other students near you can find out about them! You can also share local events related to the coursework via this form. Please be sure you enter your event information correctly, as this goes on the calendar automatically where other students will see it.
Sharing Study Group Photos
Please head over to the Facebook album for instructions on how to share photos from your virtual or in-person study sessions. We want to hear about them!!
Find a Study Group
We know many of you are hoping to find other people near you, in your time zone, or just with similar interests, and we want to make this easier! Please enter your information on this form by end of day on Tuesday, May 22. Marat and I will work on grouping people on Wednesday and Thursday, and will roll out these new groups and create any necessary channels by Friday, May 25!
Before you add a new row, look through the previous entries to see if there is already a group you could join. If so, reach out to the group organizer to let them know you are interested!
Facebook Norms
In response to feedback about the communication platforms feeling disorganized/overwhelming, we are changing the focus of the Facebook group and are limiting what posts will be approved there, just to help keep it organized.
Please do use Facebook for:
Please do not post:
We ask that you use Slack and the forums for these instead! We hope this keeps everything a little neater.
That’s it for this week, but we hope these resources are a great way to help you connect with one another to make progress in your coursework.
Have a great weekend, and we'll see you on Monday!
Welcome to week 2- the past week has flown by! We love seeing all the relationships being built here, and Slack and the forums are humming with your energy!! Please read below for announcements:
Slack/forum norms
We have seen and heard frustration about how busy Slack/the forums are, and have also observed some unproductive use of both platforms. This is normal for early on in a scholarship and most people are doing great, but we want to reiterate norms and participation expectations here:
Programming and participation opportunities
We have gotten a lot of questions about organized meet-ups, student leaders, calendar of events, study buddies, etc. This is all coming! We're only one week in and we want to give you all a chance to get settled before throwing more information at you.
AMA schedule
Now that we're one week in and everyone is figuring things out, we will be hosting fewer AMAs. If you can't attend an AMA, remember you can always add your question to the student questions doc.
You can also view the upcoming schedule for the rest of May.
New to Slack?
Welcome! If you haven't already, check out the following resources to help you get started: