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ThePoet
Joined: 15 May 2004
Location: No longer in Korea - just lurking here
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 Posted: Thu Aug 19, 2004 8:34 pm Post subject: |
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| Homer wrote: |
Interesting response poet.
You seem to have direct experience with distance learning.
This still does not solve the question that why would a teacher have to come to Korea to do this video teaching when he or she could do it from Burundi if he or she wished to?
Also, who would regulate the quality of the lessons?
Manage the payments and billing?
Sounds more like a way to maximise revenue and to turn students into consumers buyinmg a product then education itself.
Distance learning does work in certain fields poet...but it is usually supervised and regulated by an Institution. |
OK, to answer all of these questions in order:
1. The teacher would NOT have to come to Korea. In my tenure at the M.D.E. program at Athabasca University, located in Northern Alberta, I had teachers from Alberta, British Columbia, Ontario, Michigan, and California all teaching from a distance, and all from their homes (not coming to AU). At the same time, the students were from all over Canada, the U.S., Africa, the Carribean and even 2 from Korea.
The system we used worked flawlessly, and it wasn't even high-tech: We used asynchronous delivery (WWWBoard, similar to this message board), email for assignments, and correspondence for delivery of materials. We did use Paltalk and Yahoo Groups for synchronous conversations, but they were not mandatory sessions.
2. The quality of lessons are regulated by the learning institution -- in this case, Giant Yoghurt, who is setting up the program. If he is affiliated with a franchise, then standards would be in place already, and if he is beginning this venture cold, then he would have to set the standards and quality up in his business statement, and his mission document. If I was to teach for him, I would need to see these as well as sample teaching plans to be comfortable with this operation.
3. Payments and billing are easy! You can use Paypal for both. If you didn't want to lose that 1.5% per transaction using paypal, there are other ways -- wire transfers, cheques, money orders, etc. There are also several e-commerce programs that allow you to set up direct Visa/MC billing on site. If it were me, I'd use Paypal.
4. Education IS a product. and it is being "sold" in public schools, universities, hakwans, and privately. If you don't believe that it is a commodity, take a look at the number of MBA's that act as "business managers" for public school boards across the U.S. and Canada (I do not know about other countries). Look at the number of Hakwans that employ us waygooks, and look at the price of tuition in most universities. The only difference between selling the product impersonally and passionately is in the type of people involved in the front lines i.e. the instructors. There are good instructors that teach in a caring, professional, and personal way -- always going that extra mile for the students and making learning a great experience, and there are those who wait for the last of the month each month to collect the cheque and do as little as possible for it. Giant Yogurt would have to try to hire the former type of teacher if he cared about how the commodity was delivered.
5. You'd be surprised at the amount of checking, double-checking, and even triple-checking a distance program goes through before, during and after delivery. Before you even have your first student, your courses should go through development, analysis, beta testing, analysis, public scrutiny, analysis, and then compared against the original objectives of the course again -- many times even after all the checking, the final product does not exactly fit the objectives perfectly, so you then have to determine if the objectives need to be tweaked, or if the learning product needs to be revised yet again.
Once that is done, you try it on a test audience (students), and if you are wise, you give them the course for free, because they will be doing a lot of work for you. The institution will have questionnaires set-up for each section of the material to find out if the students understood the material to a specified level (sometimes as low as 60%, sometimes as high as 100%). Also the teacher should be a master at documentation so they can record all of the student's reactions to lessons ("student A had a hard time understanding the wording of lesson 3, paragraph 4", "Student B stopped sending in his assignments after assignment 3") and it should all be collated and then the course material revised again.
Finally you give it to the "real" students and you have questionnaires at the end of the course asking about the effectiveness of the material. You also have tutors in place who monitor the regularity of assignments being completed and if a student stopps for an inordinate period of time, you are on the phone asking if everything is ok, and recording the results "Yes, but my mom died, so I am taking a break" would be ok, but if they say how difficult it is, then the tutor needs to record that detail AND help them get over the difficulty. After 4 or 5 intakes of students, you get enough information about the problem spots that you can revise the working material again.
This was a general model of course, but it shows the amount of work required to get a good course going. When I was doing instructional design for a northern Alberta college working on their Forestry technician program, I had one book I was designing go through 21 major changes before it was ready to go to the student (not counting all the minor and simple changes --the version released in Compass and Chaining was v.2.1) Distance learning would be ideally suited to ESL learning, but it requires a lot of initial work before a penny is even realized in income.
Oh and as an aside to TheUrbanMyth. You said "This quote is key. Neither "conditions" or "audience" tend to be anywhere near "correct" in your typical hakwon."
To this I say, a typical hakwan is not what a distance learning institution is, nor most real schools in the world. I am sure that you can figure out ways very easily that would make this type of learning vvery much unlike a typical hakwan classroom setting.
Poet
Last edited by ThePoet on Fri Aug 20, 2004 6:22 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Homer
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| Posted: Fri Aug 20, 2004 2:51 am Post subject: |
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Poet,
Very detailed response...thanks.
I only disagree with one thing: Education is not a product or a commodity to be sold on the open market. It is much more then that. |
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PatrickSiheung
Joined: 21 May 2003
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| Posted: Fri Aug 20, 2004 3:38 am Post subject: |
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| I didn't get the impression that Poet was saying it was ONLY a commodity. |
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ThePoet
Joined: 15 May 2004
Location: No longer in Korea - just lurking here
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| Posted: Fri Aug 20, 2004 6:18 am Post subject: |
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No, I don't agree that it is only a commodity.
Most people who are public citizens and even 75% of the working teachers out there wouldn't. And even those in the top 15% of the profession (profession meaning a service that is paid for) who do that little extra -- volunteer time as coaches or chaperones -- don't ever think of the bottom line. In fact, I've had many instances where I've brought food for kids in my school because they didn't have enough, and there was no 'free lunch' program for my students. Sometimes my ex made a big pot of something and I'd stick it in the locker room (this is when I was coaching and not even teaching at a school) and recover the pot after practice that day. You all probably have stories of some teachers you looked up to because they cared.
It isn't a commodity to them.
However, its a sad fact that programs get cut, there are fewer 'free lunch' programs, and there is less and less out there for the student to partake in in terms of extra-curricular and even optional programs. In Alberta it is even a requirement that each math student purchase a Texas Instrument graphing calculator to use in math class (these calculators are around $135.00). I've never seen a school with a loaner program and all the books are written for operations for this specific calculator -- cheaper ones can't be used (and don't even think about telling me that SOMEONE in the deputy minister's office of education isn't enjoying a huge summer home and other freebies for 'deciding' which calculator to use for the math program).
The point is, for all (ok maybe all of them aren't black-hearted bastids, but most) of the administrators, and a few teachers the bottom line is God. Do you know how many teacher's conventions I've been to where several of the topics were "how to invest in ongoing RSP's", or "Retire Sooner", or "Make Money, not Waves" (yes I am paraphrasing the seminar titles for sarcastic value). A good movie that shows this topic is "Mr. Holland's Opus".
Sigh....I got on my soapbox again, and didn't mean to. Sorry everyone to turn this great topic into a rant.
Last edited by ThePoet on Fri Aug 20, 2004 5:25 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Dalton
Joined: 26 Mar 2003
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| Posted: Fri Aug 20, 2004 8:23 am Post subject: |
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I think that you can only teach English in Korea with an E-2 visa and the E-2 specifies the address of your workplace. So my guess is that the answer to the OP's question is that video teaching while in Korea is illegal. It's none of my business but that's what the OP asked.  |
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PatrickSiheung
Joined: 21 May 2003
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| Posted: Sat Aug 21, 2004 11:52 pm Post subject: |
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If you do it over the internet and you register your business in your home country you will have no ties to Korea and can therefore teach all you want.
When you start hiring Korean citizens though, it gets complicated.
As long as your business has no ties to Korea, aside from serving the people of Korea with English lessons, you should be golden.
I'll say it again:
-Just be sure your business is registered in your home country.
-Do not start renting office space or running your servers in Korea. It's cool for you to physically be in Korea, but your business can't without the proper go ahead from immigration (good luck getting that).
-When you hire teachers... I'm pretty sure it's okay if they are in Korea if they're only teaching on the internet. If they start meeting students in any other capacity though, you should do what you can to avoid responsibility.
Sounds like this could be big so if I were you I would seek some solid legal advice from an internation and tax attourney. You need some experts to help you build this properly.
Good luck! |
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ThePoet
Joined: 15 May 2004
Location: No longer in Korea - just lurking here
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| Posted: Sun Aug 22, 2004 6:17 am Post subject: |
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I am also thinking that if the foriegn teacher IS in Korea, but had a bank account in their country of origin, and all money went into that account and not to an account in Korea, there is no way the Korean immigration would know.
Again, this can be achieved with a paypal account linked to your bank account or visa/mc account and is free to set up. |
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PatrickSiheung
Joined: 21 May 2003
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| Posted: Sun Aug 22, 2004 2:21 pm Post subject: |
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| As long as they are not actually working for a Korean company then immigration should be fine. If they start meeting students in person though, you should avoid being connected with such arrangements. As for sneaking around immigration and hoping they won't find out... that's pretty foolish if you're trying to start a legit business. If you're just in it for a quick buck, I'd say fine. But it sounds like you're thinking of investing a substantial amount of your money and time into building this thing. If you're going to do it. Do it right. |
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Ryst Helmut
Joined: 26 Apr 2003
Location: In search of the elusive signature...
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| Posted: Mon Aug 23, 2004 12:03 pm Post subject: |
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You know, I've had several people attempt this (all failed, of course)...heck, one guy even did a runner from our univ. to go into this kinda business....only to crawl back to teaching (traditional style).
Well, my question is this: If the teacher is the 'seller' and you as well will want a cut, how much would this lesson run? I mean, I sure as heck ain't gonna bring my hourly rate down...so my rate, plus yours = death sentence to 'buyer' / student's pocket. For that rate, they could get 'the real thing.'
Oh wait, there will always been that putz that'll do an hour for 15,000 won. 
!Shoosh
Ryst |
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ThePoet
Joined: 15 May 2004
Location: No longer in Korea - just lurking here
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| Posted: Tue Aug 24, 2004 6:20 am Post subject: |
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| Ryst Helmut wrote: |
If the teacher is the 'seller' and you as well will want a cut, how much would this lesson run? I mean, I sure as heck ain't gonna bring my hourly rate down...so my rate, plus yours = death sentence to 'buyer' / student's pocket. For that rate, they could get 'the real thing.'
Oh wait, there will always been that putz that'll do an hour for 15,000 won.
!Shoosh
Ryst |
A fair question, but you have to think about this as educational mass production. Look at the website of CentraOne http://www.centra.com/education/index.asp and then lets take a look at how we could use it in an ESL distance classroom setting (oh, and no, I am not a shill for Centra, but I've used the product, am familiar with its capabilities, and like it a lot, but there are other similar programs like it):
A comprehensive course would be set up with the course material. One teacher writes it (Subject Matter Expert or SME for short) and one person edits, proofreads and designs it into workable material. Then you have a webmaster develop it into lessons online. Actually, if you use Centra, you don't need a webmaster, the Instructional designer can do all that after editing and proofing. Those would be development contracts, and not ongoing.
Then you assign a teacher to teach the material en-mass to a 'classroom' online - say a class of 10 in a 40 minute period for the general work. Then you also give personal one-on-one conversation for 20 minutes of time for each student at arranged times per 40 minute class. So, in a day you are teaching 10 students for 4 hours.
Lets say now, that you work with each student three times a week like this. Thats 48 hours a month for one class of 10 students (or 12 hours per student per month). If you charge each student 120,000 Won that's 1.2 Million Won for 48 hours of work which works out to 25000 Won per hour. If you multiply that over a regular 120 hour/month contract, you would be receiving 3 million won per month (gross). This would be for the teacher that would want to do this full time of course.
If you set aside a percentage for the company and pay off the original costs (the SME and editor) as well as ongoing costs for web maintenance and program use (say 30%). Then the teacher can still make the same as what they are making here in Korea if they work full time.
However you can also hire part time teachers (on contract) and therefore, this type of job would merely be supplemental, and I am sure most teachers would like to do this kind of work on a part time basis, but very few would want to go full time.
Now, you said that for that rate they could get the 'real thing'. While this is true, there are many people for many reasons who do not want the real thing or cannot actually commit to the real thing for a variarty of reasons (shut-ins, work schedules, too shy, distance to a quality program - and believe me, this would have to be quality with a capital Q; you have to sell it as not just as good as any hakwan, but better! and that would sell it over the real thing too if done right).
Also, there are some advantages to this that the crafty Ahjuma might even think of, like putting three of her kids in front of the computer for the 40 minute session yet only paying for one child. Heck, a really crafty Ahjuma might invite her neighbors kids over for special english lessons at a couple thousand won each...pack the room, and her kids lessons are free. The only difference being that her kid gets the 20 minute 1-on-1 time and the rest of the kids don't. Videoconferencing doesn't mean you need to see them - perhaps they just see you and you are simply 'listening to them'
Another educational advantage to using a program like Centra is that it can be archived, and played over and over again. So the student at home can practice in asynchronous time between lessons. One of the amazing things about Centra is that a whole hour of sound, graphics, and material (basically what happened during the whole class plus the 1-on-1 time) can be stored on a floppy disk due to how they encode and compress the material. Imagine a student who has a complete library of what they learned over a year on 100 floppies or a CD-Rom.
ACK!, I really begin getting long winded with these explanations -- I am sorry if I am boring people but, I'd rather be detailed with how it can work than leave many more questions as to why it can't.
Poet |
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giantyogurt
Joined: 09 Feb 2003
Location: Calgary, AB
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| Posted: Tue Aug 24, 2004 5:13 pm Post subject: |
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I feel like I should pay Poet for such detailed description of her experience with distance education and the insightful ideas for adapting it into ESL education. Some of the suggestions you made have many things in common with my ideas and you have explained them quite comprehensively. Also, I grinned when I was reading your comment about students having to buy their own TI graphing calculators in Alberta because I went to high school in Calgary and do remember spending over 100 dollars to get one. However, since I preferred using my pencil for most of the calculations, I didn't make much use out of it. 
Regarding the progress of this venture, I have sent rather a brief version of the business proposal that contains many of your ideas and mine to my partner in Korea. He has a few friends at the patent bureau and a legal office, so he would let me know if there are any problems to be solved.
As far as the visa and immigration laws are concerned, I believe things should be fine on the condition that the business does not hire the 'sellers' as either part-time or full-time employees. As Poet mentioned, payments can be made using Paypal which I believe is the most convenient and secure method of payment. Funds can be withdrawn in most developed countries including the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Korea. The complete list of the countries to which Paypal fund can be withdrawn can be found below.
http://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_display-approved-signup-countries-outside
I agree with Poet on the idea that distance education will be the future of education. I've seen some of the leading universities such as MIT working on their 10-year project to archive their entire lectures into digital video format, making it available to anyone in the world with the Internet access. I feel the need to make fundamental change in the English education in Korea and I think part of it can be achieved with distance learning based on free market principle. It will be the first attempt to allow anyone to teach English and I'm aware of possible downsides of this. But then again, I strongly believe in 'free competition = better quality' and therefore I should let the people decide what to do, with the least amount of interference. |
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ThePoet
Joined: 15 May 2004
Location: No longer in Korea - just lurking here
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| Posted: Tue Aug 24, 2004 5:37 pm Post subject: |
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| giantyogurt wrote: |
| I feel like I should pay Poet for such detailed description of her experience with distance education and the insightful ideas for adapting it into ESL education. |
Uh, not all poets are "she's" ... I am definitely a "he".
| giantyogurt wrote: |
| I agree with Poet on the idea that distance education will be the future of education. I've seen some of the leading universities such as MIT working on their 10-year project to archive their entire lectures into digital video format, making it available to anyone in the world with the Internet access. I feel the need to make fundamental change in the English education in Korea and I think part of it can be achieved with distance learning based on free market principle. |
There have been several studies (Bates, Fahy, Crawford, ad infinitum) that show the trend to be heading toward distance education. In fact, the Internet will likely change the face of education in the next 50 years. Right now, everything is curriculum based, but with information changing and being updated so quickly, it is becoming less cost and information effective to offer curriculum based classroom experience.
As a simple example, when I taught Social Studies in Alberta, the curriculum we used was developed in 1986. Part of the curriculum dealt with economics vs. the environment and the text we used talked about possible legislation to ban Aeresol sprays to protect the ozone layer. By the time I was teaching that class, Aeresols had been banned for 6 years already.
Technology doubles every 146 days, partly because of the ability to share information with others in your field at a very fast rate, and arrive at answers. So, education will change from one of learning lessons from resources, to learning which resources are most significant to what you want to learn. Much of "school" will change from the model we have today, just as it did when the Guttenberg press was invented and created a critical threshold of change in the world. Heck, back then, teachers thought there would be no more teaching profession because of easy access to books. But teaching adapted, and will again with our new critical threshold.
Oh, and one more thing, GiantYogurt -- if you really want to thank me, just remember me when you think about the need for an instructional designer, or an online instructor...I could use the monetary contribution. 
Poet |
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giantyogurt
Joined: 09 Feb 2003
Location: Calgary, AB
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| Posted: Wed Aug 25, 2004 2:07 pm Post subject: |
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| ThePoet wrote: |
Uh, not all poets are "she's" ... I am definitely a "he".
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Sorry about the stereotyping. 
| ThePoet wrote: |
Oh, and one more thing, GiantYogurt -- if you really want to thank me, just remember me when you think about the need for an instructional designer, or an online instructor...I could use the monetary contribution.
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For your indepth knowledge and enthusiasm in this field, I will definitely contact you for further assistance when we get things started. I was worried about finding the right person for such matters but I feel very lucky that you're willing to help. I expect to hear from my partner regarding the progress sometime next month. I will get back to you with the latest on this thread then. Thanks. |
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