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
- 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
2. Turn A Negative Into A Positive
- 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
- (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
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.