Communicate with parents through Outschool.
All communication between parents and teachers must occur through the Outschool platform (except in a few cases to help with educational support for learner families with requests for recommendations/references). Also, our support team needs visibility in those communications to ensure that all users have a high-quality, safe, and positive experience on Outschool. For example, suppose parents feel the teacher hasn’t communicated promptly. In that case, we may want to review the messages to fully understand what has transpired and possibly help resolve any related issues. If parents and teachers communicate via texting or personal email, Outschool can not intervene. The same goes for payments that take place outside of Outschool. The support team will only assist with refunds and verify payments through the Outschool platform. Please help us help you!
In addition to Outschool’s requirement that communications remain on our platform, Outschool prohibits parents and teachers from facilitating in-person (“in real life”) meetings unless at an Outschool-sponsored event.
Read more about Outschool’s communication tools.
Promote your other Outschool classes!
Outschool encourages teachers to promote their other Outschool classes. Still, we do not authorize the promotion of outside classes, services, businesses, or personal websites/social media anywhere on the Outschool platform except for those who are not eligible to take Outschool classes (i.e., interested adults and learners 19+ aging out of the platform.) Class listings, teacher profiles, classrooms, and private messages should be free of any links/information that might drive users or their businesses away from our platform. This includes, but is not limited to:
Encouraging families to enroll in classes on other platforms
Soliciting teachers to teach on platforms outside of Outschool
Asking users to purchase outside products/services you may provide off-platform
Hosting Outschool classes on any platform outside of Outschool
Using Google Classroom or another LMS and sharing 3rd-party sites:
While you should not host any Outschool classes outside the platform, you can use appropriate third-party tools to help you run courses, such as a Learning Management System (“LMS”). If you use an LMS such as Google Classroom or another similar LMS that allows learners to log in and collaborate outside of class, please note that it may only be used during a live class and never during self-paced classes or between live course sessions. We discourage the use of third-party tools outside of live class time for many reasons, primarily to ensure class quality and content moderation. Please note that Outschool may request access to your LMS if a situation arises in one of your classes.
Teachers may share educational resources and relevant third-party tools as resources directly with parents for educational purposes. In those cases, teachers should always do so in context and through the "Parent Conversation Tab" (never with a minor learner) to determine the relevance for their own family. Links must be educational or provide supplemental enhancement to classroom learning. All Communication Standards and Safety Policies must be followed, including sharing personal information for educational purposes.