At the end of summer courses, your language school has the opportunity to improve student retention rates, keeping students learning throughout all winter. How can you achieve that? With the right tools for online teaching provided by your own Edugo.AI, of course!
In fact, you can now develop language programs that begin with physical lessons for foreign students, and continue remotely with tailor-made lessons and exercises.
Why limit yourself and your teachers to only in-person summer classes when you can help your students hone their skills and keep their foreign language learning steady?
In this article we explain how not to lose your students even when they have physically left your language school at the end of the summer course.
Language schools are wonderful places for students to learn a new language. They provide an environment where students can practice their new language skills in a safe and fun way.
This is why the summer period is often a busy time for language schools as they welcome new students from all over the world.
However, when it's over, it is likely that many of your students will return home to their respective countries. This means that they will no longer be physically present in your school, which can negatively affect your bottom line if you do not take action.
Early fall, many language schools are left empty and with fewer staff members to teach classes. But it doesn't have to be that way. In fact, the end of the summer course period can be a great opportunity for schools to continue working and, at the same time, prepare the field for the following year.
What you could be doing right now is keeping the conversation going through online teaching. This way, your students will be more likely to talk about your school to their peers. While your teachers will be able to refine programs and keep up to date with new communication needs.
This can benefit both students and schools. Students continue to learn online from teachers they already know, while schools can continue to grow despite the fact that the flow of summer students has stopped. How do you achieve that?
As the world is going global, learning a second language and international communication are not anymore a luxury. In order to meet this demand, many schools and universities are offering programs of foreign languages. However, students have more and more possibilities regarding where to learn the chosen language, apart from traditional language courses.
This, of course, also applies to students who have chosen to travel abroad to learn a language and, once back home, want to keep on learning. If they had a good time, why not continue with the same school?
Keeping up with your ex-students is not only great for your student retention but also helps your school grow and develop. So don't forget to stay in touch with your students leaving school at the end of the summer and keep them updated with news. You can use several online tools: your school's website and blog, newsletter and, of course, social media.
But the main medium remains the distance language learning offering.
At Edugo.AI, among other things, we develop softwares for distance language teaching. Nevertheless, we firmly believe that there is one thing that an LMS should never try to replace: the teacher-learner relationship.
This relationship is easily lost with traditional LMSs, which offer few opportunities for interaction and lack gamified elements.
Edugo.AI's platform not only improves student engagement and stimulates feedback, its AI-fueled system makes it incredibly easy to create and deliver new content.
If you possess your own unique methods of teaching, apply them for online purposes too so that you can retain your students who physically leave your language school!
Online language teaching not only helps students retain their newly acquired skills, but also helps them stay in touch with each other and the school.
The first step is to create a platform for your online classes where you can teach from any place in the world. With Edugo.AI is super-easy: our machine learning system processes the language content you upload and thus generates lessons within a few minutes.
If you don’t have any pre-made content, you can make a live lesson and Edugo.AI will generate a series of exercises. You will then choose those that best reflect your pedagogical approach.
You can still offer various types of courses for different levels of proficiency – beginners, intermediate and advanced levels. For example, if you are teaching Spanish, you could offer beginners’ level courses like ‘Spanish vocabulary’; intermediate level courses like ‘Spanish grammar’ and advanced level courses like ‘Spanish speaking’ etc. You can also create self-learning (asynchronous) courses, or combine them with 1:1 live lessons on group live lessons, based on the students’ needs.
Feedback and performance tracking play an essential role in improving the overall quality of language classes. That's why the Edugo.AI’s platform helps you track your students’ progress, allowing you to monitor data in real-time. This way you can get the most out of it adapting your lessons based on your students’ actual needs.
Of course you can customize the platform with your logo and photographs of the school and teachers. This way you can make the online school instantly recognizable to your summer students. You should also provide them with an option of paying for classes through credit cards or PayPal accounts.
Learning a new language is a long-term commitment. That's why it's important to build a relationship with your students and keep them engaged with your school throughout the year, even after they've finished their course.
This is particularly relevant for language schools at the end of summer, when most foreign students have returned home for the winter period.
The good news is that there are several ways you can keep your ex-students engaged with you and your school, even when they physically leave.
Here are a few ways to do so:
