Last week I wrote a lengthy blog post and shared a few videos about an exciting new messaging platform called Volley. Even though I spent a long time dabling in Volley and setting up some spaces in it, I never really settled on a great, quick description of it. Then on Friday afternoon as I was walking my dogs it hit me, Volley is like if message boards or listserves (I’m really dating myself with that reference) had video and audio components. 

If you’re about my age or older, you probably remember the first online courses being almost entirely text-based and conducted through a message board or listserve platform. In those courses you would have a section for group discussion (with perhaps some subsections) and a section for dialogue with just the instructor. You’d write to participate in the discussions. 

In Volley you could set-up an online course discussion with the same structure of places for group discussion and places for individual discussions with the instructor. The benefit of using Volley is that those discussions can include video and audio dialogues in addition to the text component. There’s also a handy screen recording tool that you can use to make videos in which you give private feedback about a student’s essay or slideshow. That simple process is demonstrated in this video. 

Applications for Education
Volley could be the solution you’re looking for if you’re someone who always liked the structure of message boards for online courses, but wished it had video and audio messaging components.