This is mind, I don't think the price for 1o1 lessons will fall. And I am not talking about the experiments that some teachers try on platforms. I am talking about a business with a goal. During the three years and more I am teaching online my prices went constantly up, not down. So did the quality of my teaching and the number of long term students.

Don't get me wrong. I don't think that this business model will work for the whole market. It can't, because it is a niche product. If you want to serve a bigger niche, you need to go for group lessons and mass teaching / lecturing.
And in this niches, the prices will fall because of the demand. As soon as online lessons will get mainstream in India and China the prices will fall towards 0.50 cents and hour. But on the other hand you will have hundreds of students attending your class.

We will see a big shift in the coming months and years. That's for sure. And I am glad that I am living in these times of change .

In fact there is another option to both of these that falls in the middle–small group learning which has elements of extreme personalization which large group learning doesn't (yet).

And in terms of prices I doubt prices will rise (on average) in the long term. That would go against the general Internet trend which sees prices falling not rising when services move to the Internet.

I am doing a lot of group lessons, too. The real difference is that, as Christopher J. Dede says, in a group lessons you will never get the homerun. You can bring it to a very good level, but champions are made in 1o1 sessions.

My business model for the future is: 80% of the learning is done by the student himself online. That includes also work in groups and lecturing of teacher / tutors either asynchronous by video / podcast or synchronous in a virtual classroom. 15% might be real world learning and 5% 1o1.

What I think is important to see here is that 1o1 still is a premium teaching model as it used to be in the 16th century. Only rich families had access to private teachers for their children. The question here is if this model is going to change. Because if their is a higher global demand for 1o1 lessons, we need more teachers, offline but especially online, of course.

And I am very aware that group learning is huge in other areas of the world. 1o1 is a European approach but if you take a look at South Korea, China or Japan group lessons are far more popular. But also with a growing number of students who take both, group sessions and private tutoring 1o1.

So, I am not at all against group tuition, but if I could choose, as a teacher and a student, I would go for 1o1.

You tend to find articles that seem to fit your business model.

I do believe though that group tuition will be the real 'driver' for live online learning because we learn from others even more than from a tutor.

Just think of joining a class with other learners from other parts of the country, how enriching and inspiring this is as opposed to just 'one coach'.

I believe the future of live online is in group tuition – once the numbers of students versus the number of teachers go up. Right now there is an over-supply of teachers, this is why the prices are so low too.

Once this balances out, we will see great group tuition forming

Take for example employees of one global company with many branches worldwide decides that their employees need to learn German and they are put together in small groups with similar levels.
What a great way to get employees to collaborate live online.

Rgds Heike

I remember once reading that the key difference in a tutorial is that the student gets just enough time doing what he or she needs to do to learn the material. In other words the needs and most importantly the pace of the class are often dictated by the single student.

It is not so much the “elevated” ability of the tutor but rather the fact that we have time to precisely meet the needs of the students that accounts for the superiority of tutoring (the superior effect of tutoring has been documented for years).

Think about this…….many students are just mere minutes away from “getting” something when their teacher decides to move on.