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Standards for Class Listings

Guidelines for publishing classes on Outschool

Updated over a week ago

Outschool classes should be unbiased, inclusive of all learners, and intentionally designed to represent diverse viewpoints fairly and accurately. You are encouraged to read more about our class content policy prior to submitting your class. Be sure to follow these guidelines to get your classes approved in a timely manner!

Introduction to Class Listings on Outschool

A class listing is written primarily for parents, but it should not be overly sales-like in tone. Many parents will also show your listing to their learners before they decide to enroll. Each listing should stand on its own: remember, it may be the first Outschool page that a family has ever seen. It is often the first impression that a family has of you as an educator, so be sure to spend extra time on your listing so that it is accurate and professional. Outschool classes should not be deceptive, sensationalized, or misleading and should adhere to our class content policy.

Note that new teachers must successfully list their first class before they can request listing for additional classes. A successful listing is one that meets our class standards and has been approved by our class approval team. We will not consider additional class listing submissions until the first listing has been published. Beyond that point, there is no further limitation on the number of classes that a teacher can publish provided that all listings lead to high-quality class experiences. Due to the high volume of class requests that we receive, a class that has been submitted more than three times without the appropriate edits made may be rejected.

Posts for Subscription-only must still align with the class description, content, and expertise of your Self-Paced class. Otherwise, this is considered a major change.

Additionally, when making changes to an existing and approved class listing, certain changes are possible without going through the approvals process again, but some changes need to be resubmitted for approval before relisting the class.

Elements of a Class Listing: The Basics

These elements are what a family or learner will first see when they discover your class on Outschool.

Title: It is important that the title is descriptive of what your class will be covering. It’s okay to include a catchy phrase to help your listing stand out, but the title should not be sensationalized and should clearly outline the content of your class. Class titles should be in title case (eg. "Creative Writing: Short Stories”). Titles should not be in all uppercase, should not have excessive punctuation, and should not contain any emojis, alternative fonts, or coupon codes. Using the term Outschool in your class title is not permissible. Your title should not refer to the target age range, pricing, or length of the class. The only exception is if you are offering the same class to multiple age ranges, in which case the title can distinguish between age ranges like so: "Introduction to Creative Writing (Ages 10-13)." The titling of Lesson Posts must not use terms like “Subscription version” or “Self-Paced only” as this may impact the Subscription design. All Lesson Post titles should be descriptive and not just “Part One”, "Part Two," etc.

Photo: Choose an image that is engaging, age-appropriate, and at least 600 pixels wide. Make sure you have permission to use your image (no copyrighted or watermarked images, please). Do note that images that are less than 20% text will perform better in our Facebook ads, so we recommend keeping words to a minimum.

Video: This is an optional, but strongly recommended, section of your class listing. You can record a video designed for families and/or for learners providing a brief overview of your class.

Summary: Your summary should be a single sentence or phrase describing the class and cannot exceed 240 characters. An adult-facing summary is required; a learner-facing summary, written in an age-appropriate tone and style, is recommended. No coupons or promo codes should be listed in class titles or summaries. Only teacher-created coupons can be shared in class descriptions; Outschool-created coupons, such as Outreach codes or links, should not be placed within class listings to ensure referral bonuses are attributed accurately. The summary should be clear and descriptive rather than a teaser and should not be spammed with keywords or emojis - think of these sections as a 1-sentence class description.

Curriculum: If your Math, English, Science, or Social Studies class aligns with a curriculum, choose from popular curricula such as Saxon Math, IEW, College Board Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate, and others. If a curriculum isn't listed, select the Other option. Displaying your curriculum helps families find relevant classes faster and gives them insights into your teaching methods, aiding their decision-making process.

Academic Standards: For Math, English, Science, or Social Studies classes, indicate if your class aligns with standards such as Common Core (CCSS), Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), National Curriculum Standards for Social Studies (NCSS), and many more. This information helps families quickly search for classes that align with their state or national standards, ensuring they find the most suitable options for their educational needs.

Class Size: We recommend small classes for a more individualized learning experience, especially for younger students. Group classes are capped at 18 learners, while 1-on-1 classes are automatically set to a minimum and maximum of 1 learner. Groups have no cap for the number of learners that can enroll. We recommend the following class size guidelines for live classes:

  • For ages 6 and under, we recommend classes capped at 6 learners.

  • For ages 6-12, we recommend up to 9 learners.

  • For ages 12 and above, we recommend up to 12 learners.

Age Range: For the best learning experiences, we recommend an age range of 3-4 years, as learners tend to thrive and feel more comfortable in classes with others who match their developmental stage.

The age range for a live class cannot exceed 5 years. You have the option to make your age range strict or flexible. 1-on-1 and Self-Paced classes do not follow this age range policy and can be listed for any age range from 3 to 18, provided that you clearly list your expertise that supports a wider range of experience levels and ages.

If you choose to add the applicable US grade level and or proficiency level to your class, there are a few things to note:

  • You can only select up to 4 US grade levels and one proficiency level for your class.

  • Selected grade levels have to be consecutive (ex. 1st - 3rd grade).

  • You can tag your class with both the US grade level tag and proficiency tag, one of these options, or none at all.

Price: Classes cannot be free, and we enforce a minimum price of $1. Prices should be round numbers. For example, $19 or $20, not $19.99. To ensure the safety of our community, we enforce a maximum price of $10,000 per class. Teachers may not refer to where their earnings will go in their class listings; for example, stating "earnings from this class will go to charity X" is not permitted. Read more about our pricing recommendations here.

Elements of a Class Listing: Course Description

Descriptions that are well-written and highly detailed will help set expectations and get enrollments.

Class Experience: The Class Experience section should contain all of the details about your class so families can make an informed decision about if your class is the right fit for their learners. The longer your class is going to be, the more detail you should provide. For example, a semester-long class should have a lot more information included about the curriculum you’ll cover; a 30 minute, one-time class can keep to the 500-character minimum provided all the necessary information is covered. Topics to cover in the class experience section include:

  • What will be taught? What topics will you cover, and when? How is your class structured?

  • How will you teach? What's your teaching style? How much will learners get to interact with you and each other?

  • Is there any required experience or background knowledge that learners should have before enrolling? What is the pacing of the class?

  • How will your ensure that learners who enroll late into your class will feel welcomed and how will you bring them up to speed?

Certain class types have specific additional requirements for what needs to be included in the class experience section. If you are planning to teach an immersion-style class in a language other than English, you may write your listing in another language as long as you also provide a translation written in English. In all cases, for any class that has more than one meeting, you should clearly explain in your class listing what content will be covered in which meeting. It is best practice to do this in your classroom posts before each meeting date as well as a reminder to families and learners.

Learning Goals: When creating a Course, you must complete the learning goals section of your listing and offer at least one form of evaluation. These can be curriculum objectives, standards the class will meet, skills, competencies, or techniques to master. Bloom’s Taxonomy is a great place to start if you haven't set learning goals before. The learning goals section of your class listing is optional for Tutoring, One-Time, and Enrichment/Club classes.

Homework: Will you be assigning homework between class meetings? If so, let families know in your listing by including more detail, such as:

  • Will learners be completing projects individually or as a group?

  • Is there a culminating project that learners should expect to complete?

  • How long will homework take between class meetings?

  • For a class requiring reading, approximately how many pages will learners be expected to read independently?

Please indicate whether your class requires homework by enabling the corresponding attribute on the class listing edit page under class evaluation. Conversely, if your class does not require homework, you can turn the homework attribute off on the class edit page.

Grading: Will you offer families the ability to grade learners’ work? Please indicate whether you will offer either grading by request or no grading available by enabling the corresponding attribute on the class listing edit page under class evaluation.

Assessment: Will you be assessing learners during or after your class? In this optional section, you can describe what sort of tools you will use to assess progress or gauge learner mastery over the skills and topics covered. You can also give parents an idea of what a progress assessment, if any, will look like (e.g. a letter grade, written report, informal assessment, etc).

Please indicate whether you will be assessing learners by enabling the corresponding attribute on the class listing edit page under class evaluation. Conversely, if you will not be assessing learners, you can turn the assessment attribute off on the class edit page.

Note that the homework, grading, and assessment attributes are available only for Group classes, not 1-on-1 classes or chat groups.

Elements of a Class Listing: Special Considerations

If your class requires materials, external sources, or has specialized expertise or parental guidance requirements due to your class content, be sure to complete these sections.

Parental Guidance: Whenever your class content will be sensitive in nature -- such as by being potentially upsetting or scary to some learners, by containing moderately violent or graphic imagery, or by requiring learners to be extra safe (such as handling knives in a cooking class) -- you must include a Parental Guidance statement explaining to families exactly what they can expect from your class, so they can make an informed decision about whether their learner is the right fit. Outschool uses the recommendations from Common Sense Media to inform decisions about age appropriateness, and you should include the official rating of any media content you’re using in your Parental Guidance statement. (Be sure to review our class content policy as well.) If you do not need to list any content or safety warnings, you can leave this section blank.

Teacher Expertise: This section is your chance to tell parents what makes you a great educator for this class and why you are excited to teach it! You can include any relevant experience or expertise related to your class topic. For example, if you have a Bachelors in Fine Arts and you want to teach Calculus, you’ll want to provide more detail about your expertise. Similarly, if your class is focused on advanced concepts or targeted at high school-age learners, you will need to provide more depth of expertise than for younger or beginner students. Be sure to check our Class Content Policy for more specific scenarios where greater expertise is required. As a reminder, do not link to your personal social media accounts or other ways to contact you outside of Outschool.

Sources: This section is only required for certain topics; in general, it’s a good idea to include where you are getting information from for class, as well as how you are supporting multiple perspectives in your class content.

Materials: In order to ensure that families have ample time to prepare for your class, any specific materials that the learners will need to have access to should be listed in this section. This may include ingredients for a recipe, supplies for a project, or books/textbooks. If you are including a book that you authored, you should disclose that in the materials section. In the event that you want the learners to use a resource that cannot be purchased from other vendors, you should include the price of this resource in the class price. If you require a kit to run your class, you must include the price and the exact list of materials included in the kit when submitting your class for approval; alternatively, you may privately message parents with links to your website for kit purchase, provided that you only direct parents to your external website for that sole purpose, and not to collect their personal data for any other reason.

Some educators like to offer a prize for learners after a game or event in class. Monetary prizes and off-platform gift cards (such as for Amazon or Target) are not permitted on Outschool. Instead, you can purchase an Outschool gift card, send it to your own email, and then provide the redemption code to the family. Sending the gift card this way prevents the sharing of personally identifiable information (PII).

External Resources: Outschool’s class approval process takes into account learners’ privacy rights when determining which external teaching tools are appropriate for our learners to access and use while taking an Outschool class. This includes external websites or learning management systems. If you plan to use enabled Zoom apps, such as Kahoot, you should also disclose them as third-party tools. This is a requirement if learners under the age of 13 will be visiting external pages.

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