I am most probably not alone, but I must be in a special class when not one of the ten who signed up to my class turned up the other day :)

This is not a good protocol to set up on edufire. I believe we want to have the respect that if we attend a class, we turn up, for the teacher and also the other students. So…

What solutions do the community have?
1
money – students who pay will tend to turn up
2
on the day confirmation – students confirm their intention to turn up, kind of like meet-up i think…
3
message students a day before to get an idea of numbers (but this might start turning into a type of spam…)
4
others?

Hey David. There has been a lot of discussion about this lately. What we’re seeing is that there seem to be pretty distinct patterns for good attendance. The best attended classes are those instructors who write excellent class descriptions, who have worked to build up a reputation on the site (many ways to do this including writing articles, posting content, being active on the forums), message students in advance of the class reminding them and offering a preview of what they will learn, etc. Teachers who do this typically get 70-80% attendance or higher (not bad especially considering that real world classes rarely get much higher than this). Teachers who don’t do these things often get lower.

It’s a bummer always when people don’t show but maybe you can give us a little more background around which of these things you did or didn’t do so we can help you out.

Students not showing up is a common problem here at edufire, even if you have positive feedback for them to read, and you give a thorough discription of the class. It is very frustrating that people take your time for granted. I have even sent emails to students asking them to please cancel the class if they are unable to attend, but with little results. I have several times opened up my classroom only to sit there and wait for people that never show up. I do my best to not sign up for a class if I am not sure I can be there. I have drastically cut back on offering classes, because people sign up, then disappear. I wish there was a remedy for this, but it is out of the teachers hands to fix it; only edufire can, if that’s even possible.

actually i have canceled many classes for the same reason, there is no remedy for this.

Hey Lisa!

It’s actually the opposite. It’s almost totally in the teachers’ hands. Also re. Jon’s post above. Ron Smith also recently did an excellent class about it recently too.

Let me know if you need any help. You too Abdul. Maybe message Ron to see if he will do another class too.

@Jon…. in both my real-life and online classes/sessions I get 100% attendance…. which was never the case here on eduFire….

@David: concentrate your energy and have a good a time with the students that actually show up : ) Just be yourself. Cheers and best wishes!!

yes Angela, that is what i do, i give my best to those who show

In the real world and the cyber world there will always be people who show up and do not show up. In a classroom setting, there may be 100% attendance but is it really? Even with a good instructor, 50% may be fully engaged, 25% interested 10% just there for credit 10% little interest and 5 % thinking about something completely different.
With the learning environment being online, it makes it easier for the 25% to decide to not attend the class or do something “more interesting” or more “worthwhile”. Although it may be frustrating if students do not attend the course, it is the instructor’s responsibility to make it appealing and engaging enough for the students to be interested in continuing their learning experience with that instructor. Edufire’s main purpose may be to allow students to learn but without a drop of business sense, tutors cannot expect students (customers) to learn (buy their product)
It is up to the tutors to fill the gap of the “ease” of the students to go wandering of into cyber space or wherever they may please.

@Cye: point made. : )

@Forum: if community gives us a sense of teamwork, then here’s a quote by Bill Bradley:

“Respect your fellow human being, treat them fairly, disagree with them honestly, enjoy their friendship, explore your thoughts about one another candidly, work together for a common goal and help one another achieve it.”

What is our common goal @ edufire community?

Regarding no show:
It doesn’t matter who didn’t show up for a class, if they have registered for your class (WOW!) to begin with… that shows that they have considered your class worthwhile watching/participating. I wish I could shake hands with the lovely participants that actually show up. : )
How to fix the no-show!? Offer incentives like “Air Miles” points (for example).

Cheers everyone!

Wow Angie! Very well said!

@ David and @ Lisa, I agree with you.
@ Lyne, I can say the same exact words you wrote.
I believe a good class description, a good teacher profile, good feedbacks and blah blah blah might help but it’s far from solving the problem, plus if before you get all the good stuff your students never show up, you’ll never get to make your profile look “good” enough, anyway.
Like David said I agree a confirmation system might help at least for the teacher not to be stuck waiting for a whole class, nobody is showing up, ok, at least you can plan something else. In the meanwhile I’ve been doing like Angela said, I’m having a lot of fun with the few students who show up and it makes teaching very nice.
I just had a one to one session scheduled and the student didn’t show up, I lost one class, and my time. If I knew the student wouldn’t come I would have scheduled with some other student, if there wasn’t any other student to schedule I’d go and have a walk on the beach, I wouldn’t waste my time preparing a lesson and waiting. Actually that’s what happens in conventional classes, most of times, students cancel some hours before the class begins and if they don’t, they pay for the class even if they haven’t been there. I don’t know if I’m gonna get paid for the session today or not, but I think it would help if the student who scheduled a one to one session knew he would have to pay if he doesn’t cancel the class before skipping it. Specially in 1:1 sessions.

Let me just start by saying that @Cye is 100% correct! I am convinced that many tutors here on eduFire are excellent at teaching the subjects they choose to teach. However, they may be less successful at approaching online tutoring as a business. This is what is needed if one is to position themselves as the Tutor of Choice in their particular niche here on eduFire or any other online learning platform.

Let me give you an example. As both a tutor and student I have signed up to take approximately 35 to 40 classes here on eduFire. In only one of these classes did I actually receive a message in my eduFire inbox thanking me for signing up for the class. And this letter came just a week or so ago. Now I say that I signed up to take this many classes. I missed several of these classes for the simple fact that I forgot all about them.

This is something I worked very hard to change with my own class held recently on marketing your online tutoring services. Within 24 hours a message was sent to students’ eduFire inbox thanking them for signing up for the class and extending to them the option of following the class on twitter. There were at least four separate messages sent to each of the students that signed up prior to the day of the class. Those who signed up to follow the class on twitter received additional information and alerts regarding the class.

Now how many tutors feel this is worth the time and effort? I don’t know. But let me just say that out of 87 people who signed up for the class (which was my first online class ever), I think 39 were actually shown as being in the class at one time or other. I had 11 messages from people in the day or so prior to the class start that they would be unable to attend the class. This in reality equals to roughly a 65% positive response in regards to attendance for the class.

Now am I disappointed that the other 35% failed to notify me or attend? Of course I am! But the positive response far out shines those who did not get involved. And trust me, some of the people who commonly respond to forum discussions regarding the problem of students not showing up for their classes are some of the ones who not only did not attend the class, but also never opened a single message sent to them that I mentioned above. And most of these were tutors themselves!

So when they failed to show up, it did not come as a surprise to me! I never expected them to be there. But the failure was mostly mine because, despite all my efforts, I was unable to get them engaged in the class from the very beginning! But the secret is to concentrate from here on out on the ones that I was able to get involved while tweaking my approach to increase my percentage of people who sign up and actually attend.

Another thing mentioned by @Angela is the idea of incentives. Angela is giving you excellent advice for building your online tutoring business!

I spent a lot of times speaking of incentives in my recent class because they are an excellent way of helping to get students involved yet in reality cost you nothing! For example, if you are teaching a conversational course on a particular language, it could help if you sent a link to a vocabulary list of words you will be concentrating on in the upcoming session.

This helps you in several ways. First it gets the student engaged from the very beginning when they read the vocabulary list. Students who get involved in the process very rarely casually blow off attending your class. Second, you can see through the eduFire Inbox if that student even responded by opening your email. This will give you some indication as to if the student will ultimately attend your class.

But even if they don’t show up, you still are the determining factor as to if you have wasted your time or not. Before you sign on to the Adobe Connect platform, open a second browser window and after you have set up your class take the time to introduce yourself to new members of our community in the introduction thread of the forums. Send a personal message to someone you have tutored in the past encouraging them in their goal of learning a second language. As my friend Brett at RainbowHill suggests, look at the comments and testimonials that others who teach the same classes you teach have listed on their profile and class pages.

There are literally hundreds of things you can do to take advantage of the time spent waiting for your students to log on. And if they never do log on, at least you will have the benefit of knowing you did something positive that will help grow your business in the future. And trust me, you never know if that new person you introduced yourself to in the forum will actually turn out to be one of your star pupils in the very near future!

I know this was a little long but I feel passionatly determined to help tutors take their online tutoring business to a high level of success and sometimes tend to get carried away!

Thank you very much for those tips, Ron. You had 39 students?! Wow!