Monthly Archives: August 2012

New Features: SMS Integration, Quiz Progress and More

We’ve recently rolled out a few exciting new features that we think you’ll enjoy. The development of GoSoapBox is driven by user feedback so if you ever have any suggestions don’t hesitate to contact me at john@gosoapbox.com

Social Q&A Reply Icon Upgrade

Each Social Q&A entry will now show the number of replies that have been added to it. This allows users to identify when a new reply has been added that they have yet to read.

Quiz Progress Indicator

Instructors are now able to view progress information about their Quizzes. Instructors can now see how many people are currently taking the Quiz, and how many have already completed it.

Re-Ordering Quiz Questions

Instructors now have the ability to re-order the questions within their Quiz. Re-ordering questions can be helpful to fix errors, as well as randomizing the order of questions for different classes.

SMS (Text Message) Integration For Social Q&A

We’re exciting to announce that we’ve now integrated the ability for students to text message in questions to Social Q&A. This assures that every student is able to participate during class, whether they have a ‘smart’ device or not!

Polling and Instant Polling SMS integration will be rolled out very soon as well.

* Due to costs incurred on our end, the SMS functionality is only available for students who have subscribed to GoSoapBox and is limited to U.S. users.

 

COMING SOON: PowerPoint Integration For Polls

Within the next 2 – 3 weeks we will be launching functionality that allows Instructors to embed the result graphs from Polls and Instant Polls directly into a PowerPoint presentation. Students will be able to respond to the Polls via GoSoapBox or SMS and the results will be displayed right on the PowerPoint slide. Instructors will no longer need to exit PowerPoint and open the GoSoapBox window in order to see Poll results.

Integration with PowerPoint has been our most frequently requested feature and we are very excited to roll out the integration. Once our prototype is available it would be great to test it with a few users before we fully launch it. If you are interested in gaining early access to the feature please let us know.

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Major Update and Changes

We’ve recently made some major decisions in terms of our business model, and want to give you insight into what decisions we’ve made, why we made them, and how it affects you.

We’re a bootstrapped company, and have opted to not raise outside funding because we feel it’s in the best interest of our product. We’re focused on making a great product, and we want to be accountable to our users, not our investors. By bootstrapping we are able to focus on making decisions that lead to the best product possible, and avoid the pressure of making decisions based on a return on capital investment.

Just as you understand the importance of strategic decision-making in business https://vigilantwm.com/ is committed to guiding clients in managing their wealth according to their unique needs. The conscious choice to bootstrap for any company, foregoing external funding and prioritizing the development of a superior product. By doing so, you remain solely accountable to your users, allowing you to focus on creating the best possible wealth management solutions without being swayed by investor demands.

Bootstrapping though requires generating enough revenue to support ourselves as we continue to build and unfortunately we’ve determined that our current business model will not be scalable enough in the future to allow us to grow and compete with competitors who have raised outside funding.

So what’s changing?

We are no longer going to offer the individual teacher subscriptions to GoSoapBox. Instead we are introducing an alternative model that keeps GoSoapBox totally free for educators.

Here’s how it works…

  • Instructors can ask or require students to use GoSoapBox in their class, just like they do with textbooks and clickers.
  • Students purchase a GoSoapBox subscription at a very low cost ($10 per year). This subscription entitles them to use GoSoapBox with any class.
  • Each student will now receive their own account to sign in with.
  • Instructors will have access to use GoSoapBox for free

Integrating student accounts also opens the door for improving student performance tracking and analytics in the future. We have some exciting ideas on how to innovate this aspect of the product.

What this change means to you…

1. If you are a GoSoapBox user you can choose to upgrade to the ‘student account’ model. Each of your students will create their own account, and you will be eligible for the additional benefits in the future (Text message response integration, student performance tracking, etc.)

2. If you signed up for a trial of GoSoapBox before August 1st you are eligible to continue with the original subscription model as promised ($90 / year)

3. We will continue to offer volume discount pricing & pilots for Schools, Universities, and Districts. For more information please email john@gosoapbox.com

4. We will also continue to offer free trials for new users, and students are not required to create accounts during the free trial period.

Thank you for all of your support along the way. It’s been an exciting few months since our initial launch and we really appreciate all of our users’ help.

We have some exciting new features that are ready to be rolled out so stay tuned for those!