We have released our first-ever e-learning course, part of a new, interactive e-learning portal that we will continue to expand in the coming months. We will eventually link directly to the portal from the site, but for now, you can access it here for a free excerpt, or to register for the first full module, focused on Spain.
Make sure you are currently logged into GuildSomm, then go to the new e-learning site. From the "Log in" button at the top right-hand corner, you can log into the portal with your existing GuildSomm account.
Test out the content with a free excerpt of the Spain module, or register for the full course for a course fee of $35, which will help us build new modules. Payment is currently proceeded via PayPal, but you can pay with a credit card and it does not require a PayPal account.
Please let us know your feedback as we are planning many more of these courses!
Find the new content here: https://elearn.guildsomm.com
Just put a little time into the free excerpt, and if I may make a couple suggestions;
The quizzes are a little clunky. Missing a single letter when needing to spell out a foreign word for the "fill in the blank" type questions, just slows down the whole process. Other testing apps and websites offer multiple spellings as acceptable answers, I suggest you try to implement the same.If you are offering new nouns, such as varietals, try to include a phonetic spelling. Through my studies over the years, my biggest fear and hang up is hoping I say a word correctly, and not look like a fool. If I was a first time learner, not fluent in latin language, "Rias Biaxas" would not only be difficult to spell, but pronunciation would almost be guaranteed incorrect.
These are my only two gripes for the moment. Feel free to delete this comment, just trying to help ;)
The pronunciation recordings in the compendium are mostly off for Spain. I had my wife, a native speaker re-record them but they've yet to surface.
We have thus far made a conscious decision for pronunciations to be from a single native language speaker. Obviously regional dialects can be quite different and I’m sure somebody in Barcelona would roll their eyes at the way someone in Madrid pronounces their region. The same is of course true of how a sommelier in Rome pronounces a term from Sardinia. It would be great to have each region spoken in local dialect, but we decided not to try to do this unless we get to a point where we can be consistent in this approach. Not saying it’s not a noble goal, but it’s not in our current bandwidth.