Handling Connection Issues During Online Lessons

If you teach online lessons, you've dealt with glitchy wifi connections, slow-acting computers, or unidentified technology problems. This can affect our classes, and we can feel guilty and worry that this will cost us our student's confidence. 

​What do you do in these situations?

We have a few tricks and advice to handle this kind of situation the best way possible.

Relax and Troubleshoot

Before we get into how to mentally handle these situations to turn a bad situation into a good situation, always remember your basic troubleshooting steps for an unstable connection.

• Check how many programs I have running.
• Close your chat platform (Skype, Zoom, Google Hangout, etc) and open it again.
• If it still persists, I normally ask my student to restart their computer at the same time I restart my computer.
• I will usually take this time to restart the wifi router at the same time.

With this being said, let's get into the three tips for you to remember next time this happens to you.

1. Connection Issues Are Like A Fart

Don't play the blame game. Nobody likes to be blamed for either one. Even if you're positive the problem isn't on your end, it isn't in good taste to say something like, "Well, I just had a class and it went fine, so the problem must be on your end." It's always good to search for a solution. Even though the situation stinks, we just have to deal with it and move on and look for some fresh air.

2. Turn A Negative Into A Positive

Relax, these things happen. This isn't the first time you or your student has dealt with technological problems and connection issues, and it won't be the last. Since you can't control the technology gods, worry about what you CAN control. You can do your best to help the student have a good memory and good experience with your lesson. A few things you can do to create the best experience possible are:

• Offer to stay with the student late to make up for lost minutes of the class.
• Stay late in future lessons to make up for lost time.
• If you've lost a significant amount of time dealing with this, reschedule the class or offer a free class for the student.

These kinds of gestures will go a long way to grow your relationship and the trust between you and your student.

3. Turn It Into A Language Lesson

After you get your connection issue worked through, you can use this authentic material as a language lesson teaching a whole list of new vocabulary, phrasal verbs, and expressions from this real context situation. Some of the vocabulary and expressions that could come up:

• (the sound/video) is breaking up
• it's freezing
• you're pixilated 
• your picture is fuzzy
• can you hear me now?
• choppy
• you're going in and out
• let's reconnect
• let's restart our computer
• Etc.

If all else fails, try your phone

If you are still having trouble, you can always switch to your phone to finish the class. 

I've found most students are understanding of this situation. However, some people might not be very understanding, in which case, you'll just have to deal with that and let them go. People are people after all.

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