Ongoing classes for teachers

How to offer live classes that meet weekly with no set end date.

Tegan Bombard avatar
Written by Tegan Bombard
Updated over a week ago

These classes adhere to a consistent schedule, meeting regularly on a weekly basis. The class content can either build or not build week over week. Parents can enroll and withdraw their learners at any point and are charged weekly like a subscription. When a learner subscribes to an ongoing class, the learner will only have access to content in the classroom that’s posted after their subscription begins. If they subscribe mid-week and the class doesn’t meet again until the next week, they’ll see posts the teacher made starting the following Sunday. If they enroll mid-week and there are class meetings remaining within the week, they’ll see content posted beginning the day they subscribe.

Setting up an ongoing class:

When creating a new class, you can select between live video class or flex class. Once you select the course type, you can use the session duration fields to choose how long each meeting will be and how many meetings your class will have per week. To create an ongoing-type class that meets week after week, mark the check box No limit - runs week after week until you end (previously called Ongoing). For most ongoing classes, we recommend 1 or 2 meetings per week; for ongoing classes with multiple meetings per week, please note that parents pay a fixed rate each week regardless of the number of meetings they attend.

When parents enroll, they will see the following information on the class listing page:

Choosing material for ongoing classes:

This format is best suited to longer-running class ideas such as clubs, discussion or social groups. Examples include language conversation clubs, book clubs, current event discussion groups, or cooking clubs. It should be possible for a new learner to join in any week and quickly be welcomed into the class community and able to get up to speed. If your class content builds week over week, we recommend addressing how you will accommodate learners who will enroll late. Read more here on how to ensure all learners feel welcomed into your classroom who enroll late.

In order to be approved to teach an ongoing class, you’ll need to submit a brief description of the content you plan to address in each of the first four sessions of your class. Just a few words describing the topic is fine! If your session topics will be learner-directed, identical every week, or are ever-changing in response to current events/happenings, you do not have to list a weekly breakdown. Please instead explain this clearly in the class description, as well as note any potential supplies or materials that would be necessary from week to week. If your session topics plan to cover anything on our sensitive topics list, you may be asked to submit more detailed session descriptions before being approved.

Otherwise, your weekly breakdown should be listed in the following format:

⇢ Week of (Date): Topic/Theme 1

⇢ Week of (Date): Topic/Theme 2

⇢ Week of (Date): Topic/Theme 3

⇢ Week of (Date): Topic/Theme 4

Since students can join the class at any point, we recommend that you continue to update your class descriptions to let parents know which concepts you’ll cover in meetings that week and help inform their decision about when to start their subscription. Be sure to continue to refer to specific dates (e.g., Week of April 20th-27th, month of May, etc), instead of numbered weeks (e.g. Week 1, Class 2, etc.) as learners will be joining at different times over the course of a section. Check out our sample class listings page for an example.

When updating your class listing, be sure to review the changing a class listing policy to see if you might need to resubmit your class for approval!

Refunds and payouts for ongoing classes:

Since parents pay a subscription fee every week that their learner is enrolled in the class, Ongoing classes are not subject to the same refund process used by other classes on Outschool. Instead, parents can stop their subscription at any point if they decide that they no longer wish to have their learner enrolled in an ongoing class. Parents receive a full refund of their most recent subscription payment if they stop their subscription within 24 hours of auto-renewal. Note that this condition does not apply if that week’s class meeting has already started.

Please note that parents are locked into your ongoing class at the price they originally paid. If you change or increase the price of your ongoing class from the class edit tab, the new price will only apply to new learner enrollments from that point forward, and your originally enrolled learners will not incur an increased subscription price.

Please also note that if you refund a parent mid-week and they stop their subscription, the learner will still have access to class until the following Sunday, when their subscription expires.

Parents are charged for all of their learner’s ongoing classes weekly as a subscription on Sunday mornings. During Daylight Saving Time, the ongoing payments that are charged on Sundays apply to any class meetings that take place between that Sunday at 5 pm PT and the following Sunday at 5 pm PT. During Standard Time, ongoing payments that are charged on Sundays apply to any class meetings that are scheduled to take place between that Sunday at 4 pm PT and the following Sunday at 4 pm PT.

Since parents pay weekly subscription payments for their enrollments, teachers are paid weekly for their ongoing classes every Sunday morning (PST). After an ongoing section starts, Outschool pays teachers for each completed week at least 6 days after the end of that completed week; this means that it can take up to 13 days for payments to go out, depending on the day of the week that your class meets.  We do this to account for learners who enroll in ongoing classes during the week so that we can accurately pay you for all students who attended class that week. Read more about teacher payments here.

Scheduling ongoing classes:

You will need to manually create meetings for all the times that Ongoing classes meet.  We recommend scheduling these meetings at least 4 weeks in advance to help families manage their subscriptions.  We assume that Ongoing classes meet at least once each week.  If you want to meet more often, that will work just fine. If you want to meet less often, you can just choose not to schedule a meeting in any given week, and parents will not be charged for that week.  If you need to cancel a meeting, please do so before Sunday so that parents are not charged for that week’s class. If you are not able to cancel the meeting before the Sunday that precedes it, please keep in mind that families have already paid for the week, and they’ll need a refund for any meeting that did not happen.

Ongoing class sections will run as long as you have future meetings scheduled.  If you need to stop an Ongoing section, you can do so from the section edit page.  Clicking the “Stop after [date]...” button will cancel all meetings after the following Sunday and prevent families from being charged for any future meetings.

Counting Enrollments:

The "Completed by X learners" metric on ongoing classes, as well as the "X completed classes" on your teacher bio, counts ongoing sections and ongoing enrollments that have been active for at least a week.

This will count the number of “unique” learners who enrolled in the class. So, if one learner had enrolled several times into the class, they are only counted once.

How do classroom posts work? 

All learners will see the “Welcome post,” which can be modified on your class listing edit page.

Additionally, any other posts created before the first meeting will also be visible to learners, regardless of their enrollment start time. However, it is important to note that for all subsequent classroom posts, learners will only see the posts that you make after they’ve enrolled in the class. Consequently, if you post a class recording or any other class material before their enrollment, they will not be able to access or view it. This is especially important to keep in mind if your class content builds and a learner enrolls late.

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