Why discord?

You might wonder why I have opted to use Discord rather than some of the other alternatives, especially since it is rather a platform designed for gamers. I have tested a variety of software, including Webex, Zoom, Skype, Jitsi, Tox, etc… There are several reasons why I have decided in favor of Discord.

1. Integration

Discord has everything combined in one place. We have chat rooms, presentations via live stream/screen cast, and voice+video chat capabilities. You can also interact with your peers without figuring out anyone’s user name or mail address. Having everything in one place should minimize the amount of things that can go wrong. And there will be bugs and issues, and I don’t want to become a professional tech-support. It should also be less confusing for students, especially since you have other courses that use other software.

For this course, you just have to remember: Discord for interaction, website for materials. I can even offer my office hours in the same place. Trust me, I am all for software minimalism, but priorities change when coordinating large groups.

2. Persistence

On our server, I think we can achieve the closest to a coherent class room feeling. Most of the alternatives are based around meetings. The host sets up a meeting and people have to join or get invited every time. This can be automatized to varying degrees, but it still means some setup overhead every single time, which is prone to error. On our Discord server, you just have to setup once, after which you just start the application at seminar time or whenever you have a question. The text chats are persistent and can function like a forum or blog.

3. Sensible defaults

I believe that a good online course should keep the distractions at a minimum. There are enough distractions at home. And in my opinion, video is a big distraction during a presentation. Not only do the videos of other participants potentially distract from the actual presentation, but your own video itself does. Everyone knows why their opposite during a video chat is always looking at one of the edges of their screen 😉. We’re all guilty of that.

Some of you might have been to larger video conferences on platforms like Webex and Zoom. If so, you know how distracting and annoying some of the default features can be. Like shifting video focus to active speakers, which happens when someone coughs, moves their chair, bumps into their microphone etc. Eliminate video, problem solved. I do think that seeing each other improves the experience and makes everything more personal. But for this, I prefer smaller group-based video calls in addition to regular presentations.

4. Limitations of alternatives

Other than missing features, there are some major limitations that rendered the alternatives useless for my purposes.

1. Stability: Some alternatives have stability and quality issues with growing group sizes.
   
2. Restrictions: Some alternatives restrict the time or group size during sessions.
   
3. Difficult setup: Some alternatives are not as easy to setup or do not come with sensible defaults.

As a matter of fact, I would have loved to use a free and open source alternative. Jitsi and Tox are great pieces of software, which arguably respect privacy much more and are more secure. Unfortunately, these alternatives also suffer from some or all of the afore-mentioned drawback. Most importantly, I am not confident that they can deliver the quality I would like for groups of 30+ people.

Finally, you are not forced to create an account or download anything. If you are opposed to any of this, you can always just discuss this with me via email. If you prefer another more secure or private (voice)chat program for smaller groups or conversations with me, I am open to use anything mentioned above. I have most of those programs installed anyway.