Let me give you some thoughts on this feature that comes up once in a while. Sometimes it is called “Learn Now” or “I am Online” or “Instant Question”.
The idea behind it is that a student enters an educational webpage and there he / she will find teachers who are instantly available to teach a lesson or to answer a question. In some recent talks I had with educational start ups this feature was mentioned a lot.
In some cases it can actually make sense but generally I think its effect on the core service of those sites is overrated.
Let me start with online teaching platforms. An “I am online / available” feature on a website could get teachers bookings for their free trials. Instead of setting up an appointment with the teacher a potential student could schedule a first talk immediately. This feature had been implemented on eduFire months ago but was discontinued to an apparant lack of interest rather soon. Now a “Learn Now” feature is available for teachers on Myngle since last week.
The problem is that I don’t think booking a lesson, even a free trial, is a spontaneous act. This is true for language lessons as well as maths, science, yoga etc. Because booking a lesson has a totally different mindset as basis. Let me explain.
If you are booking a free trial with a teacher you already did some thinking in advance. You are pretty sure about the fact that you want to take a couple of lessons, not only one. So you see it as the beginning of a longer period. That means you are looking for a teacher who can deliver the solution to a more complex problem. You need to learn German because you are moving to Germany. You need to learn Algebra for your exam. It is not just one question that needs to be answered, there is a whole bundle of questions that need explanation and guidance.
Therefore you are looking for a teacher you can work with over a longer period of time. And you won’t take this decision spontaneously just because some English or Maths teacher is online that specific moment. You will go into the details, read the profiles, the feedback, the recommandations. You will most likely compare several teachers and then contact a couple of them for a free trial. In the end you will choose one of them to do the lessons with. As you can see, this is a process. You are not taking “the next best teacher online”.
Where a Learn Now feature actually makes sense is in the school / university sector. Here students can actually have one very specific question they need to have an answer for immediately. The classic “I got stuck in my homeworks”.
There are already a couple of sites that offer instant access to tutors on the internet. In this case the need for a quick answer overweighs the need for a matching longterm teacher / tutor. All the student is looking for is just a quick input, a hint, an explanation. And this won’t take the classic lenghts of an online lesson, e.g. 30 or 45 minutes. Those problems can be solved in less time.
That means one needed a fairly different approach for the teaching and payment structure. A feature like this can be compared to an educational helpdesk. Lots of teachers are sitting in front of their computers and are waiting for a student with a question in their field of expertise. To offer a successful service the provider has to make sure that at any given time at least one teacher for every topic has to be online for a potential question. Otherwise the service is pretty much useless.
If you are coming on the website on the search for an instant answer and no teacher / tutor is there you probably won’t come a second time. So you can imagine the logistics behind this. What if a teacher is not available on his regular slot, who will drop in for him etc.
Therefore this feature is only for very targeted and focused concepts unless you are able to attract hundreds or better thousands of teachers who will be available for your service basically for free with the option to get paid if a student chooses them.
Second problem here is that you cannot charge for complete lessons. As I said most problems will be solved in under 30 minutes, maybe even under 15 minutes. Hence as for a classic helpdesk line you needed to offer a pay per minute service.
As you can already see, the two concepts do not match at all. Language learning platforms attract adults who want to learn a language in a classic course structure over a longer period. If those students then have a spontaneous question, they will contact their teacher via Skype, IM or email and not over the platform.
Also the payment systems needed are totally different. For courses you need discounts and packages for single questions you need pay per minute.
Therefore I would reduce this feature to a simple “I am online”. Or simply insert the Skype status to the teacher profile like on VerbalPlanet.com. This is of course only possible on a platform that does not intervene the teacher / student relationship. So for more restrictive platforms an inplemented IM service would be the solution. This way the student and the teacher would meet on the website, could have a chat and then schedule a free trial if needed. Take a look at the italki solution from MangoSpring for example.
Bottom line: Sometimes it does not need to be the space ship, you know 
. In fact, most of the time a simple pair of good walking shoes is sufficient.
In the second post on this feature I’m going to explain why “I am online” = free chat.
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