Students create Discord group to keep each other engaged.
Students at George Brown College (GBC) have a new way to connect and talk with each other.
Prior to the start of the academic year Hermes Sun, a GBC student, decided there needed to be a way for more students to connect, communicate, and share resources. He would end up becoming the founder of a Discord channel for the college.
Discord is an instant messaging and voice platform that allows users to communicate through text, voice, and video calls. It features “servers” which act like forums with various channels for specific topics and can host private or public conversations.
Sun accepted an offer of a postgraduate in Game Design, he was seeking a way to connect with all college communities,
“I tried to find the ready forum, I try to pick into some physical group, nothing that really seem to bring people together.”
Therefore, He decided to create a new connection hub for not only his classmates but also all GBC communities: GBC Discord.
“It is quite a way to bridge the gap between students from different campuses and different programs, like a centralized campus,” Sun notes.
This is not the first time he has been in charge of a platform like this. In fact, he has experience from his time in Hong Kong, where he was a student at the University of Science and Technology.
That Discord group is still active; however, it is managed by other students right now.
“It’s a private platform. it’s not like Facebook or not like some online platform, and it is not searchable directly from the internet. But if [you] have access to the specific channels, you can review the context,” Sun explains.
Although, Sun has started alone, Keanu Asuncion, a friend and student joined later to manage the Discord and prepare a handbook.
Now, more than 500 people are members of GBC Discord already and use the different channels and hashtags, from a gaming group to a study group. They even use the platform to share personal experiences.
The Discord team are also working on new features such as GBC Professor reviews and a place for sharing memories, among other things.
Although, some of GBC professors have used the discord before, the college is not officially involved with the Platform.
“When things like [GBC Discord] happen, initially, there is a small idea and a group of people try to get things together, and then later on, if everything is sustainable, then [they] will try to ask opinion or help from the college,” Sun mentioned.
If you want to join the GBC Discord, you can use the following link https://sqr.co/gbc.
