Instructor-led Classes. What are they and how are they used?
Introducing instructor-led classes
Besides providing an environment to create and deliver self-paced and blended-learning courses, the Calibrae platform also enables the creation and and hosting of instructor-led classes. An instructor-led class is where an instructor typically leads a cohort of learners through a course, either in person or online. Learners and instructor work through the course together during a given period of time.
Classes are useful for managing cohorts of learners who work through a course together during a defined time period. For regularly repeating course sessions, administrators can publish a series of scheduled classes. Learners can then enrol on the class that best suits their schedule.
Besides dedicated teaching time with an instructor, classes can also be configured with time for self-paced access to course materials before and/or after the instructor-led session, perhaps for learners to work through some preparatory activities, or for reference after the class is over.
There are three steps to creating and delivering an instructor-led class.
1. Create a course
The first task is to create a course and populate it with the learning activities. Some activities may be
- for individual preparatory study prior to delivery by the instructor
- for learning together (or independantly) during the instructor-led delivery
- for post-delivery study or reference
You'll hopefully already be familiar with how to create courses and populate them with learning activities and exercises. If not, feel free to go back and review the relevent topics in this guide.
2. Create a new class and associate a course
With a course created, the next step is to create a Class and associate with it the course, along with other meta-data like course fees, duration, pre and post class access to course content, etc). We'll walk through the steps of creating a Class and associating class meta-data in the next activity.
3. Schedule deliveries of the class
Having associated a course with the class and having determined the class meta-data, the final step is to schedule deliveries of the class. You'll determine the delivery location, (perhaps a built-in online meeting room, a third-party online meeting room, or a physical street address of a training facility) as well as the instructor(s) who will deliver the session. Again, we'll walk through how to schedule class deliveries shortly.
Be sure to distinguish between instructor-led classes and workshop sessions.
- Workshops facilitate a blended-learning experience, where regular self-paced content is supplemented with live instructor-led workshop sessions. Learners typcially work independently through self-paced content, and periodically attend supplementary live instructor-led workshop sessions. Once enrolled on a blended-learning course, learners then book places on scheduled workshop sessions that best fit their schedule.
- With instructor-led classes, an instructor leads a cohort group of learners through a course during a fixed period of time. Learners enrol on the class - classes do not typically include separate bookable workshops. The instructor and learners progress through the class together in real time for the duration of the class. Where multiple classes are delivered simultaneously by different instructors, each cohort operates independently of the others in their own virtual classrooms.
