It has been a challenging time for school owners as they ensure that their students are still learning while at home by introducing e-learning. This E-Learning was introduced because school owners were looking at a short COVID-19 holiday, unknown to them that it will extend to this time.
Now this E-Learning program is taking more of school owners’ saved income as they are mandating their teachers to teach without being paid because parents are not forthcoming with any form of appreciation fee as I will call it. School owners are also providing data to their teachers to ensure the teachers get the available resources to enable them to continue teaching. Unfortunately, school owners may not be able to sustain this pro-bono service that they are rendering to students. So, I want to encourage us to use good packaging to mandate parents to pay for any e-learning program being offered by schools.
To be able to package the E-Learning program for parents, school owners should first put into consideration the following:
- Select your Subjects and Classes: School owners will need to pick the specific class or classes that they want to offer this E-Learning program. In addition to the class, they will need to compile a list of subjects to be offered during the E-Learning Program. For instance, the E-Learning program can be for grades 1 to 6, or 7 to 9 and the subjects can be specific to Mathematics, English, General Knowledge, and so on. The bottom line is that it must be designed for a specific class with compiled subjects.
- Tagging your E-Learning Program with a unique name: This will make the program unique in such a way that parents will have an understanding that it is not a regular program that forms part of the term’s work. However, the curriculum of the term’s work may be treated. The name for such a program can be COVID-19 E-Learning Program, E-Learning Holiday Lessons, etc.
- Introduce Program Fees: Because the program is different from the regular term’s work and also has a unique tag on them, it is necessary to introduce program fees in order to sustain the E-Learning program. The fee can be a combined subject fee or a fee per subject.
- Selecting a Virtual Learning platform: It is very important to understand that the success of your E-Learning Program will be determined by the E-Learning Platform you use. You will need a platform that has login details that will prevent students who have not paid from having access. To make it unique, you will also need a platform that enables you to hold a live video class session. Zoom would have been good but the challenge with zoom is that students who have paid can decide to share the meeting link or recorded link with other students who have not paid. Another necessary feature for the type of Virtual Learning platform you will need is the ability for the platform to record all live video sessions and enable students that have missed a live session to watch and re-watch anytime they are available. The Platform should also enable teachers to issue assignments and paid students can log in to submit assignments before the submission deadline. Finally, the Virtual Learning Platform should be able to allow students to communicate directly with their teachers. Very few E-Learning platforms have all these features. However, ViClass Virtual Learning Platform is recommended for this type of E-Learning Program because it enables school owners to host as many subjects as possible, enroll only students that have paid, teachers can start a live video class session, the system automatically records it which benefits students who may have missed the live session and students can directly contact their teachers outside the live video class session.
- Prepare and Market to Parents: Once you have selected the classes and compiled the subjects, picked a Unique tag or theme for the program, decided on the amount you want to charge for the program, and you have selected your preferred E-Learning Platform, then you will need to design flyers, prepare time-table and market to parents of your students.
- Strong-will is required: In order to achieve all these, you must have a strong will to implement “no pay no login details”. Only those that have paid will be able to log into the virtual learning platform to prevent running the E-Learning program with your savings.
The world does not really know when schools will resume daily physical live class sessions again as the numbers continue to be on the rise daily. It is expected that school owners should not only look at E-Learning in the interim but also a permanent E-Learning solution because even if schools are asked to resume, rest assured that over 50% of parents will not be willing to let their children return to a physical structure. The best way to ensure you do not lose this category of students as a school owner is by making adequate preparation for a permanent E-Learning platform.
