In their blog WiZiQ announced that from now on every teacher can schedule public classes on his own. Before you had to apply for a public class and a WiZiQ member set it up for you.
Therefore let us have a quick look on this feature and how a teacher can use it to promote himself.
Public classes are not only a great way to attract potential customers to your teaching but they also prepare you for teaching to a larger audience, of course.
I am offering a first meeting to all my new clients for free. But this is a learning needs analysis where we talk about the needs and objectifs of the student and get to know each other. It’s not a teaching session. By offering free classes potential customers are able to “test drive” your teaching style. Therefore I highly recommend to offer a “real” lesson, something that gives a real value to the students.
If you never taught groups online before using the WiZiQ Public Classes are a great way to start. Even when I did not promote my public classes on my own site, on facebook and so on I always had around 10 to 15 students in the class that came over WiZiQ itself. And those students have always been highly motivated which makes teaching really fun.
How are your classes promoted by WiZiQ and how can you promote them on your own?
WiZiQ promotes your classes as follows:
- On their Twitter account http://twitter.com/wiziq by tweeting the upcoming lessons of the day.
- On their homepage, showing the upcoming lessons.
A very powerful tool to promote your classes on your own is the embedded classroom. Basically it’s just like embedding a YouTube video on your website or blog. When you set up a class you get a code snippet, you copy it and then paste it where ever you like.
People can then easily join your class directly on your homepage or blog by either log in with an existing WiZiQ account or quickly opening a new one directly in the widget.
You can take a closer look at this feature in the WiZiQ blog. There you will find detailed descriptions of how to embed the widget on your website or blog.
Conclusion: if you are planing to offer paid group lessons and are not yet experienced in handling an online audience or if you want to promote yourself and your teaching skills then you should really go ahead and offer a public class on WiZiQ.
And if you are interested in trying out the classroom from the student’s side or in learning some basic German, my next free public class will be on monday, march 2nd. You can join me on my website www.deutschhappen.com.
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