Lanching virtual classrooms
Some of the choices like the decision to switch to a virtual classroom were easy to make. We needed to protect our staff and our students and to facilitate continued learning for our students and apprentices.
Our business model has always been about caring for our learners and a personalised approach to study. Above all, it was important to preserve these distinctive traits despite changing to virtual classrooms, to avoid being just another online delivery website.
We opted for virtual, but live, classroom delivery. Keeping our classes small meant we retained our interactive approach and our tutors continue to be approachable and supportive. By using software with video images helps us make the experience more personal.
In practice our worries turned out to be unfounded. It was a natural progression to transfer the business model onto the online classrooms and support. Our learners feedback is overwhelmingly positive. The results from our recent survey support this.
What our students have said
“..my development coach is fantastic at what he does. Always has something relevant and interesting to discuss and his level of knowledge not only about the apprenticeship but multiple other topics is brilliant.” First Intuition Reading student
“Everyone I have encountered so far as FI have been lovely and always so helpful. I couldn’t pick just one :)” First Intuition Reading student
The personal approach is not a badge we wear or something written on a branding document. The thing which makes our business special is the team of tutors and coaches who deliver it. The personal approach is about the people who care for their learners and who are proud of each step which their learners take towards reaching their potential.
It is the hard work and partnership with our learners which makes us what we are, the team work and the characters involved.
The future
In conclusion the biggest lesson we have learned is that our business is agile and able to adjust. This is likely to be needed in the future as businesses face unprecedented levels of change. We can be online but preserve the small classroom. It’s our people who make the difference.
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