As eduFire grows and teachers have the opportunity to teach more students, I believe we may need a student rating/feedback system. For example, 2 students may request the same teacher for the same time period. Who do you choose?

Student A signed up for twenty classes and attended 18 out of 20 classes. Student B signed up for 20 classes but only attended 5. This gives the teacher a basis to make a decision. This system is similar to the system eBay had. When a customer purchased an item, I could view their payment history to know if they paid, paid on time, complained and constantly requested their money back, and so on. The sellers also lived under this system – was the product as advertised, packaged correctly, etc.

eduFire has a system to rate teachers, but as eduFire grows, we’ll need a system to evaluate our students.

I can’t agree more Alan. Presently, I look at student profiles and see if they have taken any 1:1 lessons. There is no way of seeing whether a student has taken 1:M lessons now, and can’t tell whether they actually followed- through with their class attendance, but their profiles do give me an idea of how serious the potential student is in attending, and possibly paying for their future lessons. Once 1:M is out of beta and 1:M class teaching & attendance is on both tutor & student profiles, I would like to see 1:1 and 1:M attendance separately.

Very good idea Alan

Great topic Alan. I definately agree with you.

I’m with you on this, Alan. Idea board material, perhaps?

And I wanted to add: this is especially important when the teacher does not require prepayment for a class. I don’t know about the rest of the tutors, but time is a major form of currency for me, and anything that causes me to waste it is a major drain of resources.

has this idea been implemented???

I believe that by the end of this month it will be. At least the prepayment idea. Or maybe next month, I’m a little fuzzy on the deadline.

Will it really work? Does it guarantee teacher’s performance? Will it promote fair competition between teachers?…I don’t really like the idea of a student rating a teacher…They’re not usually fair on their judgement…it is not that I have anything to be afraid of…it is just my view on this matter!!!

@Juan…. students have always been rating teachers on this site….

Prepayment is starting on July 15th. That’s been in response to fairly overwhelming feedback that people (both students and teachers) would prefer that.

As for student ratings, that’s something we’re considering doing. We do have data on which students show up, etc. The challenging thing is what to do about students with poor ratings. I can see an argument for allowing the teacher to pre-approve them for free classes (especially if they are taking the seat of a potential “better” student).

However, it gets a little murkier when we’re talking paid classes. Do we really not allow a student into a class they are willing to pay for?

Thoughts?

Jon…. I think students who enroll “massively” in either free or paid classes and never show up would have poor ratings and I don’t see any problems with teachers being allowed to accept or refuse them: willingness (like good intentions) is one thing…. participation is the key!

I think a feedback system for students & teachers alike is a real MUST for a website like eduFire which is meant for serious teachers and serious students.

Personally, I always leave a feedback for my students after each session and they do the same with me. It is a matter of mutual respect.

On my point of view, feedbacks help teachers to always offer a better service to his/her actual and future students. Thus, leaving a feedback for students would motivate them to attend sessions and would be very rewarding & informative for those students achieving their learning goals.

By the way, there are more & more students asking me for sessions and never showing up (this has been happening a lot during the last 2 weeks). I always exchange a few messages with the students to get to know them (learn about their level, interests, reasons to learn and main goals) before accepting their request, and thus being able to prepare a personalised lesson for them. Thus, I can normally “guess” in advance who will or will NOT show up. Anyway, I always give people “the benefit of the doubt” and thus feel the duty to always enter the classroom and wait for the “academic 15 minutes” and … lose time & money:-(

Believe me, this warm and smart community does NOT need thousand of “ghost students” but a bunch of motivated and serious students ( luckily there are many of them here and I take this opportunity to thank them for having chosen me as their tutor:-)) we tutors will be more than happy to offer the best quality teaching possible.

My 2 cents:-)

Cheers,

Katia

This is a good idea; I need to start chatting people up before I accept their sessions in order to not identify what level they are at in the requested subject, but also to identify the students who are a bit flaky ahead of time. Thanks for the idea, Katia! :) I also think students should have a rating system as I had one student who scheduled me 3 times consecutively, and missed each and every appointment.

Katia, I do agree 100% with you: thousands of ghost students aren’t good publicity anyways! As I always said, quality is what makes a site/business successful…. not quantity! :D

What I can’t understand is where the feedback we do for students for 1:1 session goes. I give a feedback score every time after a 1:1 session but I never see it reflected anywhere on the student profile …..

Yes,I support you totally.In this way we can judge student’s profile according to the scores and attendance he/she has.

Solution:

Prepay at the time of booking.
Cancellation^ accepted a given period of time prior to class, example:12 hours before
If student does not show up or cancel, *teacher gets paid Same applies to SupePass students.

@Enrique – I support this strongly (at least for non-Superpass students) I am disappointed eduFire are not going down this route on the 15th July. I thought they were :(

However, for Superpass students, I don’t think it will work as there is no charge to them to book. They could carry on booking as many classes as they liked and they wouldn’t be charged anything over what they have already paid so they won’t be penalised for not turning up – in your scenario, eduFire would be penalised because they would have to pay out for each non-attendance, which might exceed the cost of the pass.

However, I do believe prepay at time of booking is the answer to most non-superpass no shows and I really hope it gets implemented.

By the way, this might interest you. It is pretty old….

@Mair – I agree with your view on the Superpass discussed above. Frankly, I don’t agree with Superpass, in the first place….But, since its implemented already, I agree with you.

There must be some control regarding massive sign ups, and its consequences in massive no shows.

There Must be a limit of NO SHOWS, or students should not be able to enroll in classes…..something must be done……ENOUGH OF BLAH…..BLAH…..and everything is the same.

When frustration and dissapointment run high, lets go Here for a moment.

Now anyone can register a class and after that they have to pay.If it were like that student can’t register with out paying a class, it would be better.Because now new students just try how does it work click them one after one to check the system,so you might saw new students are more in this “no show up” list.