When the Rolling Stones sang, “I can’t get no satisfaction” they had never met the Customer Support team at Grockit. In an effort to provide world class customer support to our customers, we’ve added the Get Satisfaction feedback widget to Grockit. There is a new HELP button at the top of grockit.com which links to the widget. When you click HELP the widget prompts you to leave feedback in four different ways. You can leave an idea, ask a question, report a problem or give praise. Your feedback will be posted to Grockit’s knowledge base where other users can leave feedback and search similar problems. If you don’t want your feedback to be public, you can simply click “Post Privately” and it will be emailed to the Customer Support team. If you are a registered Grockit user you can leave feedback instantly. If you dont have an account with Grockit, you will be required to create a Get Satisfaction account before you can post your feedback.   Want to see some feedback that other customers have left?  Click here to go to our knowledge base page.

We found another way to get you addicted to studying in Grockit. We’ve embedded instructional videos into Solo Practice questions. The content in the videos is sources from over 1,000 YouTube Edu videos and matches the skills being practiced in each question. There is a video for almost every skill tested in Grockit all the way from the Academy Math and English through our test prep products. To access a video users simply click the You Tube icon next to the skill tag in a question. We think these videos will really improve the learning outcomes of students. Check out the screenshot below.

Who doesn’t like a little healthy competition amongst friends? Grockit has added a new way to play our game that we think you’re going to love. It’s called Speed Challenge. In speed challenge you will compete in head to head action over 10 rounds of questions with a timer counting down. The rules are simple. The first person to answer quickest and get it right wins the round. If you guess first and you’re wrong, your challenger will be alerted to your incorrect guess and have the remaining time to answer the question. If you guess first and you’re right, you get all the points and go on to the next question. Should the 10 round game end in a tie, the competitor with the fastest fingers wins! The Grockit team has been playing it all weekend and we’re hooked. Speed challenge is not only fun, but also addictive!

Going solo has never looked so good before! That’s because of a great redesign to the Grockit solo game. Here are a few of the highlights:

• Check out the new title bar. We’ve added an information icon to help you learn about some of the features in Grockit and how to interact with them.
• We know you have skills, but sometimes it helps to have a refresher. When you click on a question’s skill tags (located on the right side of the screen), a related wiki search for that skill type will appear on-screen. This makes solving unfamiliar questions a little bit easier.
• Need a hint? At the bottom of screen, we’ve placed a hint button. Clicking the hint button will eliminate some incorrect answers by turning them red. (Maybe the answer is embarrassed for being wrong? haha)
• Time is on your side. One of the most requested features that you asked for was the removal of the timer from solo games. It’s gone! You can move at your own pace.

We love it when you send us ideas and ways to make Grockit great! Keep sharing your thoughts and telling us how to make Grockit better.

Screen shot of the new solo game interface.

Screen shot of the what happens when you click the “Yes! give me a hint.” button.

Need a study partner? Sure you do! Studying with others is not only fun, but one of the best ways to learn. So Grockit has added a cool new feature to help you easily find people who study at the same times as you. Using this new feature is simple. Go to your profile page. There is a new button under your profile picture called, “Suggested Study Partners.”  Click it to get a list of people using Grockit who like to study at the same times you like to study.  Add them as friends so you can see their upcoming practice sessions and schedule times to study together. Try it out and let us know what you think!

Whiteboard is another new feature that helps make Grockit a great learning environment. Imagine a chalkboard in your web browser! Students can draw images and write out equations together in the same space. For math questions, there are pre-set geometric shapes, coordinate grids and coloring tools to easily map out graphical solutions. For English questions, students may edit sentences by copy-pasting text from the question into the whiteboard and applying any mark-up they like.

Grockit Instuctors will enjoy all the same tools for their lessons. Using Whiteboard in combination with our new Audio feature will allow students to visualize what the teacher is actually talking about. Additionally, instructors will have the ability to dictate which students can “come to the board” to work on a particular problem. Very cool!

Here is a screenshot using Whiteboard to draw a diagram to help solve an angles problem:

Grockit has added an awesome new feature – Audio!! With just one click students can now talk live with Grockit Tutors and other students in Group Lessons. This is another feature that makes working with Grockit Tutors a great learning experience.

In this screenshot, when a student clicks the blue audio button they will join a conference call with Jake, one of Grockit’s Tutors.

Audio Button

Also cool and new to Grockit are Facebook Recommend buttons. Students can now recommend Study Sessions and Grockit Tutors to their friends in Facebook. This makes it easier for students to find times to study together with friends. We added this feature because we know students learn more when they collaborate in Grockit.

Recommend a Study Session

Recommend a Tutor

We hope you enjoy these exciting new features.  And as always, look forward to your feedback!

We’re really excited to introduce the first batch of Google related code and features we are rolling into Grockit’s collaborative learning communities. To start, we’ve incorporated Google’s collaborative document writing platform Etherpad into our lessons and courses. This adds a really useful component to Grockit’s collaborative study platform and let’s teachers dig into essays, writing assignments, personal essays for applications, and class notes. It’s awesome and we think you’re going to love it! We call it Noteshare in Grockit. Here is what our Academic Director Jake Becker has to say about it.

“Imagine the possibilities with Grockit’s new Noteshare feature…students can collaborate on writing samples, revise business school applications, practice timed essay prompts, and much more. The applications for students to perfect their writing with expert instructors are endless. Connecting instructors and students around the globe, our Noteshare feature enables people to work together in realtime to review and edit any writing sample. Combined with Grockit’s existing realtime audio capabilities, Noteshare’s integration into Grockit’s lessons has created one of the web’s most versatile tools in online writing instruction.

With Noteshare, students and instructors can type synchronously in the writing sample as they edit the document together.  Each user’s text is highlighted in a different color. These color assignments are referenced next to the user’s avatar in the top right of the screen.

Noteshare is another feature that wonderfully leverages Grockit’s wide network of students and experts to collaborate in a creative and unique learning environment. Not only will students be able to refine their language skills in realtime, but they will be able to upload virtually any sample to work on live with a great instructor or their peers. Imagine the possibilities!”

Etherpad live in Grockit

We’re excited to show off our new profile pages. Check out the screenshot below. You’ll notice styling changes were made to bring the look and feel of profiles in line with other recent updates to Grockit. We love the new look. In addition, the performance analytics stand out more.  Said Grockit CEO Farbood Nivi, “…these new profile pages really blow up your analytics and make them more prominent.” We hope your test scores blow up equally!

We’ve made it a little easier to learn about and invite friends to upcoming practice sessions and lessons by creating info pages for both. The pages are designed to provide the information users care most about. Students are also able to rsvp for a game directly from these pages or join one already in progress. For a closer look checkout the screenshots below.

Practice Session Info Page:

All the relevant information that helps a student decide which sessions to join including subject, difficultly level, skills covered, and people attending is provided on the practice session info page. You will also notice new share links to Facebook and Twitter which makes it very easy for you to invite friends to practice with you in Grockit. We think this is pretty cool because Grockit is a collaborative learning environment, and one of the best ways to learn is with your friends.

Lesson Info Page:

The lesson info page displays all the information the practice session info page does. In addition, it provides details on the instructor who is teaching the lesson. This helps students decide if the particular lesson is the best for him or her.