(This is a long one but please bear with me. There’s some important info in here!)

Hey all. We’ve been working hard to officially launch 1:M Classes here at eduFire and have some good news to report….we’re almost there.

eduFire Classes will be launching on January 20th (less than 2 weeks away!). Here’s the nitty-gritty:

-When eduFire Classes officially launch they will be made visible publicly (right now the only way to see Classes is if you know the exact URL or have signed up for a class in the past). This should draw a lot more attention to Classes which will of course be a good thing. We’ll be doing a number of promotional efforts in conjunction with the launch of Classes as well.

-When eduFire Classes go live you’ll have the ability to create a class in whichever subject you like. The focus of eduFire is still going to be Languages and Exam Prep for a while but you are certainly welcome to create a class in Creative Writing, PHP, Chess or whatever else suits your fancy. We’re excited to see the wide variety of classes that will happen!

-As a teacher, you’ll have two options when eduFire Classes go live. The first is to run a free class. For free classes your students will not be charged and you will not receive any compensation as a teacher. There are a number of reasons to run free classes including to promote your 1:1 tutoring or paid 1:M classes or simply because you enjoy teaching and sharing knowledge. The second option you’ll have is to charge for your class. The minimum price per student per class will be $5 and you’re certainly welcome to charge more. As with 1:1 you’ll have the option to have your students pay you after the class is done or to require your students to pre-pay. And as with 1:1 we’ll be taking a small service fee from that amount to cover our costs, payment processing, etc.

OK, now on to one very important announcement:

-When we move from the beta period that we’re currently in to the official launch period the classes that are currently on the schedule will be removed. There are a number of reasons why we have to do this and we’re available to make this transition as smooth as possible. All of your classes are now available from your Dashboard and so you can clone your classes easily and preserve all of the class information. We do realize that it’s a hassle to have your students sign up again but it’s a necessary part of moving out of the beta period. We’ll have more details about this soon but if you have any questions please feel free to post them here.

I’ll keep this short for now and look forward to any questions that you might have. The beta period for 1:M has gone spectacularly well and we’re very excited to roll this out to the world very soon!

CONGRATS to Jon, the eduFire team, and the whole community! Yeah!! I can’t imagine the “behind the scenes” work that has gone in for this to become a reality. My sincere kudos.

Having said that, and experiencing the first 1:M tidal waves (and barely keeping afloat) with a lot of help from the eduFire community (you know who you are ;)), I do strongly request a one-stop, tutorial page for both tutors and students on how you create/sign up/set up equipment/pay for etc. for 1:M classes, wishfully BEFORE Jan.20. Tutors and students alike are all willing to be helpful and understanding to make 1:M work, but tolerance levels decrease when bandwidth, time, and patience start to wear thin. Just want the official 1:M to have the smoothest of starts. My two cents. Congratulations again!

This is a wonderful facility.

I just ran my first session, mainly with people who are new to Edufire.

I think everyone appreciated the opportunity to talk, however many basic technical issues, where to find a link to log in, how to log in, how to operate within the environment, and the lack of an accessible test/simulation environment made it quite difficult for the newcomers.

Thanks for the feedback Wren, Philip. I know the guys have been working really hard to make this happen.

In the meantime, much of what I do now is help tutors with 1:M, whether it’s the initial consultation or sit in with a couple of classes until they are 100% happy.

If you’re reading this and want to really make the most of 1:M send me a message!

Thanks again to Jon and the rest of the team for yet another milestone.

I agree with Patrick that the lack of an easily accessible simulation environment is problematic. Yes, this can be arranged in advance, but that takes away much of the advantage of the flexibility that eduFire offers.

@Marco

How and when can i start settingt these up?

Semi Private 3-6 students. Beginner Conversational Spanish. 9am and 11pm eastern time Tuesday and Thursday
Group. 7-12 students. Beginner Conversational Spanish 2pm and 9pm Eastern time Tuesday and thursday

Semi Private 3-6 students. Intermediate Conversational Spanish 9am and 11pm eastern time Monday and wednesday
Group 7-12 students. Intermediate Conversational Spanish 2pm and 9pm Eastern time Monday and Wednesday

Prior to enrolling in any course, I would like to have a short conversation with you, to determine which is the best course.

It’s wonderful that eduFire will provide the platform for both free classes and classes costing a minimal amount!

I’d like to shout out some thank yous:

To Jon, Marco & Koichi: You rock! Thanks for making eduFire a great global community for knowledge sharing. Jon has talked about the importance of “global intelligence” and the ability “to get more knowledge out of one’s head and onto the Internet.” Well, what an amazing opportunity we have here!

To eduFire’s tech crew: Thanks for the remarkable uptime and throughput! You’re so great at keeping servers humming and bugs at bay.

To us members: Don’t we do a good job of keeping the eduFire stoked? It’s nice and warm in here. :)))

(To anyone who’d like help: eduFire Administrator Marco C suggests that you contact him for assistance. Send Marco a message! He’s really great!)

Wow! Congratulations!!! I’m so glad things are going smooth! :)

I have to second what DJ said: we all have a lot of thanks to make for this! So THANK YOU, EDUFIRE!!!!

Here’s to a great eduFuture for both 1:1 and 1:M! :)

Are you still planning a solid fee-per-month for taking many classes? The amount of classes I take currently will render me broke at $5 per class :(

And also if there are 10 classes listed for the entire course is that $5 per class meaning $50 for the entire course?

If I am registered and can’t make it am I still going to be charged?

Thanks!
Lauren

Lauren, you only will be charged for classes you attend.

You will also have the ability to drop individual classes once registered so if you think you cannot attend I urge you to do this as it makes a seat available to somebody else.

Great question.

@ Enrique, you’ll be able to set the classes up I believe from Jan 20th.

Absolutely we can have a chat. Send me a message with best days/times and we’ll hook up. :)

Sorry Marco the following comment is a requirement for students before they enroll. It was not meant for you. Sorry for the confussion. Of course, we could meet anytime anyway…hehe

Prior to enrolling in any course, I would like to have a short conversation with the student, to determine which is the best course

Marco, you mean that the classes will begin on January 20th, or on that date we can begin to set them up?

@Marco. I have questions, but I’ll start with these:
1- I need to speak with the student prior to him/her registering. This is in order to make the groups as homogeneous as possible. Will this be possible? How?

2- Semi-Private will be from 3-6 people. If there are less than 3 people, will the class be canceled. How would this work?

3- Group. Same as point 2 , but with 7-12 people.

As a new Tutor and Teacher at Edufire, I am looking forward to this new Dimension, and to setting up regular lessons for students to attend.
Congratulations on a Fantastic Platform for Online Teaching.
Maggi Carstairs….the Voice of Australia

Hi everyone! I have lots of comments. There needs to be a way to update classes or delete them. I’ve been asking Marco for help but I see something completely different then what he sees. Then I had one class that went great but the second class was aweful because it would not display the screen correctly, I tried showing them a program by sharing my screen and it kept coming and going and did not go well at all and I tried multiply games nothing worked, which was upseting after all the planning. And I wanted to edit that class because they wanted to focus on conversation and some games especially since it wasn’t working. They are also all in Europe so I need to change to a time that is not 4am their time.

I definately think there needs to be options to edit and delete classes not just clone them because I still can’t delete the ones that are wrong.

Thanks!

@Marco! Another question. Will we have the option of having CLOSED GROUPS or CHARTERS? By this I mean, one class regardless of participants. In other words, one payment. This is good for companies, families, etc.

Charge a flat fee, and you can allow a group of people in. This reduces admin work as well. No need to count how many came to class ……let me know. Or call me about this. You know where to find me. If you see me on Skype, just send me a message, and if available, we can talk.

@Coral

Let’s get together asap and sort out the issues you have.

For the benefit to other tutors though I’d like to advise that screen sharing uses a lot of bandwidth. It can work ok on a 1:1 and even 1:M but it’s something I don’t recommend tutors use unless they really have no alternative. You can paste URLs in the chat pod for students to click rather than share your browser, uses up no bandwidth and just works.

Editing and deleting classes is an option we’re not including right now. One of the reasons is that when students pay for classes there may be a situation where the essence of the class can be somehow changed to the one they originally signed up for. So for now, you do have some editing capabilities, though once your first student registers you are no longer to edit the class.

If you need a class deleted you need to first ensure all students are contacted then contact Koichi or me and we will be able to delete a class for you.

Coral, let me know when you’re free and we’ll hook up to resolve your issues. :)

With the 1:M going Live soon Koichi and I are holding a fabulous class to help you get the most out of 1:M

Click here!

@ Enrique

At the moment the 1:M payments are per seat although your idea sounds fantastic! Go hit it on the Ideas Board!

Are we going to have to create a new Edufire account also? Or can we use the one we have now?

The one you have now is perfect! No new accounts necessary at all. :)

Hi all!

Marco, one monthly fee to take as many classes as you want would be just perfect!!! If you charge $5 dlls per class, then it would be a no-go for me and maybe some other students as well, not everybody earns US dollars (at least that’s my situation).

Please consider the monthly fee charge. I would like to continue to be a part of Edufire!

Thank you so much!
Noemi

Well, watch this space!

I put the Charters on the idea board http://edufire.com/ideas/288

Hey guys. There are a lot of questions here so I might miss a few of them but here are some answers:

1 – There will be some subscription offerings in the future. However for most subjects the only options for a while will be to pay for classes a la carte. Having said that, teachers will still have the option of offering free classes so there should still be a good number of classes available for free regardless.

2 – Yes, unfortunately you will have to wait until January 20th to put new classes on the schedule. So there will be a period there where we’ll be transitioning and there might be a few days with not very many classes available. That should be temporary though as we’ll ramp up quickly there after.

3 – As for editing/deleting, Marco has that right-on. It’s a tough thing to handle because once a student has signed up for a class (and perhaps paid) we don’t want things changing on them. This is something we’ll revisit in the future and your feedback will be helpful to us in this regard.

4 – Charters is a good idea. Hopefully something like that can be a part of eduFire in the future! :)

5 – You have the ability to set a minimum and maximum number of people per class. If the number of people who sign up for the class doesn’t reach the minimum number then the class will be canceled and if it was a pre-pay then anyone who has already paid would be refunded.

6 – As for talking to students ahead of time the thing that we recommend is to have a prominent call-out on your class page asking students to contact you prior to signing up. At this point there’s no way to require pre-approval for a class although that’s a feature we’re considering for the future.

OK, I think that covers some of this. Please keep the questions coming!