Did you know that you can get your own group together to take classes on Outschool? Here's a guide as to why and how you might become a class organiser on Outschool.
Normally, when you go to take a class on Outschool, you will enroll your own child or children, and then hope that the class meets its minimum class numbers and goes ahead. Every teacher on Outschool is able to set their own class minimums, and some teachers will still teach a class with 1 other learner in it, but in the main, parents enrolling their children in a small group class want their child to interact with and learn from the other classmates.
However, during lockdown, a new approach emerged out of necessity, and it is the basis of this that allows a parent who is wanting to gather a group together of other children to take a class with their own children today.
When children couldn't meet their peers or get together for special events such as birthday parties, teachers started offering online parties on a wide variety of subjects, from Disney princesses to escape room parties to take together. The child's parent would contact the teacher directly to book a time and date for the online get together to happen. Instead of paying per head to go bowling or to soft play, the parent paid for the enrollments for the online party or class. These were purchased as gift enrollments, and then every parent of children invited was sent a code to claim the gift enrollment for their own child under their own account, and this worked really well.
If it wasn't for a party or class where one parent is paying for the gift enrollments, and when parents just wanted a group of friends to take a class together and each parent paid for the class themselves, the teacher would provide a link to the private section of the class (one that does not show up when you search for classes on Outschool), and then this link was sent to each parent to separately enroll their child.
This approach is still open to anyone looking to bring together a group of children, whether they be friends, family or others that you've gathered together to take a class with a teacher at a set time.
When you might choose to organise a class
Here are some of the situations you might choose to become a class organiser and organise your own private small group class with one of our Outschool teachers:
- A class you want your child to take doesn't reach the minimum numbers and you want to make sure it goes ahead
- You have a group of your child's friends who want to learn something together on Outschool
- You home educate and want to organise classes, much like home edders organise trips to places
- You want to bring together the children in your family who are all over the world (or at least not in one place) to do something fun together, either as a one-off (such as an escape room) or on a regular basis (such as an art class, gaming class etc)
- You want one of our Outschool teachers to teach a class based on a qualification or specific topic that they don't normally offer, but would if there was demand (eg GCSE Environmental Management)
- You want to get a group of children together to create something or participate in something like a D&D campaign or experience.
- You're looking for an afterschool or holiday activity for your children, but you can't find one locally that meets your needs.
- You are a group organiser, and want to book an Outschool teacher for an event, camp or course.
How to set up your own private class
Setting up a private class is fairly easy to do on Outschool. If you know already what class you'd like to take, and you have found that class on Outschool, you can just either message the teacher directly, or request a private class for your group from the class listing itself:
The teacher can then let you know if they are able to fulfill your request, and will create the class section for you. Once you are given the link for the class, you can either share that directly with parents (see a good tip below) or purchase the gift enrollments.
Tip: If the parents you are inviting do not have an Outschool account already, you may want to use your Outschool referral link for the class instead of sending them the normal link. This will get any new parent to Outschool a $20 credit towards a class (it may even make it free for them, depending on the cost of the class). Do this by opening up the link the teacher has provided you with, and hit the share button, which will bring up your referral link. You will also get a $20 credit when they take the class.
Here is how to share your referral link:
How to purchase gift enrollments
If you are either collecting payment for the whole group, or covering the cost yourself, you can pay for all the spots in the class using gift enrollments for any children that are not your own. Please note that paying for classes in this way does not enable the referral link sharing.
When you click on Enroll, you will have the option to enroll your own child(ren) and then you will need to click on Gift Enrollments to purchase any number of enrollments for other children attending.
When you send the link to the parent to claim, they will get a screen that looks similar to this:
Once they claim the enrollment, they are then in the class and good to go!
How to find other children to take classes with your child
If you don't have a group to take classes with your child already, and you would like to find other children to take the class, you can do one of the following, and then send the link to join:
- Ask your friends and family if their child would like to join yours in taking the class
- Ask in your local or regional home ed group or school community
- Pop a post in a national parenting or home ed Facebook group that allows sharing of online classes (they may require you to be transparent over any referall links)
- Post in the UK Outschool Families group to see if anyone else would like to join the class (or test the waters if they are interested)
- Post in the UK Outschool Home Educators group if you are a home educating family
To get inspired with Outschool class topics, take a quick look at this extensive, but not complete, list of classes.
