Finding a teacher that’s right for a student can be a time-consuming process. Every student has different goals, and comes from a different background. Right now, students have to take the initiative to find a teacher. However, shouldn’t there also be a way for students to post what they are looking for, so interested teachers can contact the students?
That’s why we’re trying an experiment that we’re calling Learning Requests – http://www.italki.com/teachers/learning_request.htm (you must be logged in)
With Learning Requests, students can submit information about their:
- Background in the language
- What type of lessons they want
- Their budget
- Time availability
After a student submits a Learning Request, italki will try its best to match up teachers that would be the most capable of helping the student to achieve his or her learning goals. italki will contact those teachers. Finally, italki will return a list of suggested teachers back to the student.
Only students that have purchased italki Credits (ITC) can use this feature.
We hope that this feature will be helpful for students who need help finding a teacher. We think this feature will eventually evolve into a system where teachers can easily view the demand for their services. If you’re a teacher and would like to be on a recommended list for students, please send us an email to teacherhelp at italki dot com.
If you have suggestions about how we can help match students and teachers, please feel free to send us ideas through our feedback form or through our email at feedback at italki dot com.
learning request, marketplace, students, teachers
It’s been two months since we launched the open beta of our Language Marketplace (announcement), and we wanted to say we’ve been very pleased so far. The Language Marketplace is where students can pay for online lessons and teachers can get paid to teach a foreign language. In this short time, we’ve already had over 2500 teachers register to teach 70 languages online! Of the teachers, over 20% are professionals, meaning we have over 500 experienced language teachers ready to teach you on italki.
Through looking at our marketplace, we’ve also learned a lot about paying students. It’s not a surprise that English is the most popular language to study. Over 50% of the sessions taught have been for learning English. Given that most non-native speakers have a general desire to learn English, we think this is a sign of how much unmet demand there is for English language teachers. Interestingly, learning Chinese Mandarin is the second most popular choice, followed by learning Spanish. As Chinese Mandarin grows in importance, we believe more and more people will look online to find a teacher. In many areas around the world, Chinese teachers may not be available, and online teaching rates seem very reasonable.
We’ve also found that many students are using the Free Trial feature to find the right teacher for them. This is a great way for students to test out a couple of teachers and find the one that has the most compatible learning style. It’s also a good opportunity for teachers to get a better understanding of how the system works, and a student’s particular needs and ability level.
Overall, we think the growth in the number of students purchasing italki credits and bookings sessions with language teachers is a sign that people are getting more comfortable with the idea of learning online. This should be good news for all the internet startups in this space (Edufire, WizIQ, ForteMall, Sclipo, and Moontoast) who have a similar vision that education will eventually come from many sources.
Keep telling us what you think about the site and our Language Marketplace. And keep following the blog — we’ll keep you updated as we put up new features. The italki team
chinese, english, online, spanish, students, teachers
