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Online Teaching : The e-Teaching Community

Created on: 02 July, 2009 Members: 33099 | Community Link: http://e-teaching.wiziq.com

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How can WiZiQ help sell your courses?

by Harman Singh
Posted on 03 March, 2010

We have been asked by at least a few teachers if and how WiZiQ plans to help sell teachers' courses.

From our standpoint, courses will be a very important part of WiZiQ, especially because:
1. A course is something that have a large enough learning objective that students are ready to pay for.
2. Selling courses is one definite way a teacher can earn a living.
3. We can earn revenue through commission on sales of courses.

You will soon see the course feature evolve - much like classes, there will be private and public courses, paid as well as free courses. Only premium members will be able to set up paid courses although we are thinking of allowing free members to list paid courses for a small listing fee.

The way we plan to help sell a teacher's courses is quite similar to the way public classes are promoted, but will be adding more modes soon.

First, it is always a good idea to promote your course in your circle of influence i.e. on your blog, website, Twitter, Facebook etc. And in this case since you sell to students yourself, we don't charge you a commission - only 5% + $0.20 as the processing fee.

Second, we are working on certain areas to promote your courses to the fast growing user base of WiZiQ:
1. Very similar to the public classes page, we will have a dedicated course-listing page with search, available a link in the main menu at the top
2. On each student's home page, we will show relevant courses of his interest
3. With the soon-to-come "Follow" feature (very similar to Twitter's), any student who "follows" you on WiZiQ will automatically receive a notification as soon as you create a new public course (or a class, test or tutorial)
4. Further, we will be sending out a periodical notification to students about courses and classes relevant to their needs based on their class attendance history.
5. And of course, they will be listed on your profile page so whoever visits your page, will get to know about your courses.

As the WiZiQ user base grows and students get more and more engaged on what the platform has to offer, you can expect your courses (and classes) to get more audience.

Tags: WiZiQ, courses, teaching business, teach and earn

by Harman Singh posted on 04 March, 2010

Namrata,

Thanks for sharing your questions. These are some of the scenarios we have thought of and based on the experience from live classes, I think it should be the following:
1. On "until when can a student join the course"
There should be the "last date to sign up for the course" that can be set by the teacher
2. On "if the courses will be live"
There can be perpetual courses with no end date such as a course that has only video tutorials. The course which has classes in it needs to have a start and an end date as specified by the teacher. If a teacher wants to "re-create" such a course again since its the new set of students that are being enrolled but the course remains the same, we will give the feature of re-using a previous course with new start and end dates. In other words, a live course with a start and an end date needs to be considered "new" with every batch of students enrolling in the course.

I am still looking for ideas around this, so please feel free to contribute.

Can you explain what you mean by lateral entry?

by Harman Singh posted on 04 March, 2010

Namrata,

We are thinking it should be entirely the teacher's choice to let the student enroll the course while it has already started.

Ms. Sengupta,

Copyright should, we believe, be of the teacher or whoever owns the content in the course. As I explained above, courses don't have to be in the live format. Could you describe how you would ideally want to offer a course?

If others experience in delivering online courses and have ideas as to how online courses should be, please share your thoughts.

by Harman Singh posted on 04 March, 2010

Yes, recordings are something we thought of and they already can be used as a part of the course.

by Kalyan Sarkar posted on 03 March, 2010

In addition to these all aspects, teachers can also plan and create a course which may have asynchronous module(s) in it. Through which a teacher can have a royalty impact in earning revenues; similar to writing a book where a one time effort keeps generating revenue for life.
Teachers (Premium members, for now) who wish to create course may Apply here

Which includes:-
1. The Title
2. The Objective of the Course
3. Price of the Course (one may keep it 0 if the course is FREE)
4. A short write up as About the course
5. Keywords (preferably selecting from the Auto-fill suggestions which will be linked to the central database and will give a networking effect)
6. Finally the Links of the uploaded Tutorials, Tests, Classes (any or many).

The actual flow chart of creating a course is:-
1. Planning/brainstorming for the course
2. Listing out the materials one wants to include in the course
3. Uploading the Tutorials or Tests (if planned to be included in the course)
4. Scheduling the Classes (if planned to be included in the course) or earmarking the recordings of the classes on wants to include in the course
5. Copying the links of the Course Materials and arranging them for the 6th step of the Application form
6. Filling up the Application form and submitting the same.
Let us look forward for a number of quality courses which will lead the Education and the Business both hand in hand.

by Englishteacher Namrata Arora posted on 04 March, 2010

This new feature surely seems promising.
Would these be LIVE courses just like Live Public classes; anyone can come and join at the moment?

Would all these Courses be in specific deadline? For instance,the Course can be joined anytime before a given date and after that date the enrollment stops. What about lateral entry?
I hope I am not bombarding you with a lot of questions!

by Englishteacher Namrata Arora posted on 04 March, 2010

Thank you Harman Sir for the clarifications.

Lateral Entry means joining the course in between. For instance, I conduct a 15 hours course on TOEFL-iBT for students who'll take the test on March 20. A student comes across the details of the Course when I have finished with the first 2 classes.
Now, the student wants to join this course, and I can either offer him the recordings of the first 2 sessions or take those intro classes separately for him. In this case, keeping a fixed date/deadline for enrollment will not apply. Should we let such prospective students make a lateral entry?

by Kajal Sengupta posted on 04 March, 2010

This feature of wiziq is going to be interesting.It will be easier for the teachers too because it gives the flexibility to choose the topic and it need not be an entire chapter.
However, I would like to know about these:
What about the copyright of the courses? In other words can the teacher use them elsewhere?
As far as I could understand the courses are kind of books which the students can use as and when necessary. Do they have to be in class format?

by Kajal Sengupta posted on 05 March, 2010

David is right in a way. I have seen Khan Academy's recordings. They present it in a easygoing style . Recording the class also makes the students feel as if they are attending the class in a class room--an environment to which they are used to

by George Machlan posted on 04 March, 2010

"Cha-ching" (sound cash register makes when ringing up sales)
George's official stamp of approval.
;-)

by David Friedman posted on 04 March, 2010

Khan Academy's approach has been to make recordings.

You can definitely follow that approach in WiZiQ.

An advantage of that approach is that if the classes increase in popularity then it is possible to keep with the same platform for live classes with student interaction.

David