Hi everyone, I will be teaching our class on how to teach a class on Thursday, January 10 at 7pm. Please invite your friends who are crafty and might make great teachers. And if you’ve thought of being a MakeICT instructor, you are welcome to attend and ask all the questions you want.
This is a brief presentation with lots of time for Q&A. We’ll cover the signup process, types of classes, pricing recommendations, how instructors get paid, preparation advice, and anything else you’re curious about.
We had a room full of people for this class, thank you all for coming! Some topics/questions/ideas that came up:
Multi-session classes: people asked if they could teach a class that ran, say, every wednesday night for six weeks. My answer is yes but our system doesn’t handle it elegantly right now, but try it and we will make something work!
Minimum students: we need a better way for instructors to set a minimum, I can understand if they want to cancel a class if only 2-3 people sign up. My favorite way to check and see how many people have signed up is to use this page: https://makeict.wildapricot.org/events I think if we’re going to cancel class for lack of interest though we should only do so 48 hours in advance or something, I would hate being a student and having a late change of plans! You can also bug the socialmedia@makeict.org a week before to remind us to really put the publicity on for a class that’s slow to fill up. Some of them we go easy on facebook because they always fill up instantly, others need more help.
Yes non-members can teach classes! If you’re a first time teacher we will get you a check-in helper whether or not you’re a non-member, so while we’d like you to join eventually, you are welcome to teach first, get an instructor check, and apply it right to your dues!
You are more than welcome to re-arrange classroom tables, I do it all the time! I’ll put some example configurations in the slides. For computer stuff I like big aisles I can walk through to spy on people, for workshops I like to push tables together to make groups of four.
Instructors were nervous about buying supplies for a class then having people no-show and request refunds - I assured them we have a 7-day in advance refund policy, but we need to stick to it. We have made exceptions for extreme circumstances (death in the family, car accident, etc) but we try to avoid it.
Guest registration, aka “bring a friend” - this is in the works! I need to post another thread about how payments should work.
Any other questions/concerns/takeaways you have on classes?
I think we’re down to you and I doing FB regularly, and I’m currently working 6-7 hours of over time per week. I’d really like to see more instructors willing to co-host their FB events. That way they get notifications, answer questions, and promote their classes through the event themselves.