We are currently in the process of redesigning the ChinesePod dashboard to show users more useful information in one centralised place.
We are working on draggable widgets (similar to Fitbit/Wordpress) so that users can customize what shows on the dashboard.
If you have any features you would like to see added on that page feel free to comment below.
I would very much like to see similarity ratings between the lessons. One of the long standing concerns with CPod has been a seeming lack of structure for the users. Compared to traditional Chinese books where the lessons build on each other, the CPod lessons seem to rarely do this. An incredible feature would be for CPod to look at the words used in each lesson (all the words, not just featured vocabulary) and compare them to all other lessons to give a percentage overlap. If I were able to study a lesson, and then study a different lesson with a very high degree of overlap, that would enforce the language I’ve learned in each, thus cementing the language in and speeding up the rate that I can acquire new words. As it currently stands, I may study a word in one lesson, and not come across that word again for another year.
A similar idea would be to provide a percentage of a lesson that a user should know based on lessons the user has marked as studied. If, for example, a user was transitioning to Upper Intermediate, they could choose a lesson with a high degree of overlap with all the Intermediate lessons they have studied. This would make this difficult transition a lot easier.
This is an interesting idea. Seems like something that Steve Kaufman is doing over on LingQ. I’ll discuss it with the IT team and see how technically difficult it is to do this for our website. I think it would be pretty cool.
I actually first saw something like this at FluentU. Great feature.
Another thing that might be good is search sets that you can pin to the dashboard — basically a set of bookmarks linked to a search term.
Say, for example, I want to apply to become a zookeeper here in Chengdu, but prior to applying for the job, I need to improve my vocabulary when it comes to breeding pandas and looking after snakes.
If I could do a one-off search for ‘zoo’ (or even a more complicated Boolean search?), and then pin the search results as a set of lessons onto my dashboard, this would be pretty useful for building customised content sets.
We are actually looking to develop a kind of custom tags feature like Evernote, gmail labels so that users could make similar sets like you describe.
I have noticed that the lesson tags and “related lessons” cited often miss a lot of very pertinent similar lessons. I’m not sure if an automated search of overlapping word count will catch everything either, but probably worth a try. Maybe not so useful for newbies either; I don’t think they want to see the top 1,000 matches for other lessons that also contain more than one instance of the words “我” and “是“
On a related note, I’d like to be able to curate my own courses. Once I find a bunch of related lessons as @yibuyibu describes above I would like to be able to put them in a virtual binder and find them quickly and easily, maybe with a button on the dashboard for “my custom courses.”
That’d be great. I look forward to it.
Agree. I think this is why it would need to be a percentage. So, yes, just about all lessons will have a bunch of 我， 是， 个， 不， etc. But lessons with the highest percentage overlap should also pick up lessons related to, coffee, for example. Also, maybe not straight word count, but simply that the same words are used, regardless of how many of times.
[quote=“GwilymJames, post:1, topic:219”]
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[/quote] Hi guys,
Here some ideas for a seemless experience when comes the moment to switch lesson.
On the web version :
What about a button “previous”/“next lesson” on the lesson’s page ? Like this no need to press “back” in the browser and directly pass on the next lesson within the same level.
On the app :
When I am already in a lesson and want go back to choose another lesson, I land on the “latest” lessons’s page.
I would rather prefer land were I just left my previous page within the same level.
Especially when you went far in the level and that you have to scroll all the way down to find where you did stop previously.
Hope that can give you nice ideas for future updates !
Thanks for the feedback. We’ll look at getting some of these ideas added on the site and app. I’ll let you know if and when it’s done.
Hi @326022520, we have added this feature. It lets you skip to the next/prev lesson from that level.
Hi,
I hope it’s not too late to suggest additional features for the dashboard.
What I’d love to see:
(1) Instead of seeing ALL latest lessons, I would like to see lessons that are appropriate to my level. At the moment the first thing I see is mostly advanced and intermediate etc. lessons, but my level is elementary so they are almost all irrelevant.
(2) In addition to the ‘latest lessons’ tab it would also be great to have a ‘recently studied’ lessons tab.
Thanks!
Hi,
i totally agree with the ideas of @372648812 372648812
This would be very valuable.
This could be realising by persisting my selection of the filter (level, bookmarked) etc. It is annoying to select a filter (my consist of 3 parameters) before every podcast.
Furthermore:
At my level (elementary) almost are current shows are with Fiona and Gwylin. While you do a great job your precessors already did great, and probably diversification is motivating.
I tried yesterday very hard to find elementary shows from 2011. There is no real way to do that.
I can start either from 2017 and go back with 50 clicks or start from 2005 and to the same (via oldest first filter).
To find shows from john, jenny, vera, ken and all the other hosts and guests we need better options.
Maybe this could be a filter for years. Maybe a range selection for the number (podcast 2000-2500).
The best filter criteria would be a filter for the host. But i admit this would probably too much work for you, because then you add to the necessary metadata to all 4000 podcast.
I found some old features in your website, that it didnt notice before.
There are really many entry points into content in different places on the web site.
A bit confusing.
There is the filter function on the dashboard. This one i used intuitively the last year.
There is the “lesson library” tab on the top
Here is also the “playlist” site with different interesting search options.
Here is even the “list” function that allows me to get to content from different years (with acceptable comfort).
There is “my courses” below the profile menu.
Interesting features for experts and probably a lot legacy stuff over 12 years of chinesepod.
Is there any plan of consolidating search features into one place?
You’ve stumbled upon the main problem facing ChinesePod. 12 years of a hand built website makes for a tricky time navigating and updating without breaking things. We are working on a large project to overhaul most aspects of the website, and search is top on our priorities.
Regarding your search for all elementary lessons, I think the List function is the fastest method.
How could a great resource be even better? I’d like custom reviews from lessons. I’m hoping the response to this is “It’s right there, silly.” haha Right now I export the words to pleco and review in there. But it’d be nice if I could build a test similar to the placement tests but that pulled exclusively from studied lessons.
Also, is there a scheduling feature anywhere? Like, I’d like to study three [intermediate] lessons a day and then they’d add to my podcast feed at three a day. Doing this manually kinda gets hard unless you’re super diligent about marking off the lessons as studied.
Again, great site.
We don’t currently have any scheduling features. The closest thing we have is a custom playlist feature on our Android app that lets you select lessons in your desired order.
We don’t have this feature either. We are in the process of updating the website (a big job) and hope to improve the tests/gamification of it.
In the Android app I’m able to filter for lessons I have bookmarked and lessons I have completed. It would be really useful to be able exclude lessons I’ve completed or book marked. Hopefully I haven’t just missed this feature.
I also would enjoy being able to filter by host. I usually just put a playlist on shuffle. In this way I recently discovered a Qing Wen combo that I really enjoyed — I think the hosts were Clay, Amber, and Connie. They had a great effortless on-air rapport that had me smiling and giggling right along with them. We all probably have our favorite hosts and teaching styles. I’ve thought for a long time would be kind of extra sweet if it were possible to filter by hosts or make the hosts searchable in some way . There are tons of super relevant lessons to discover with hosts that many of us may not have ever come across. Lilianna anyone? Greg? Pete? Tom? Shanell? Vera? So many different hosts 
Filtering by year would also be a nice entry point into the huge collection.
