Recurring Class – What, Why, and How?

“I’m a teacher and have a class that repeats every week on Wednesday for the next 8 weeks. Can’t I schedule all the classes at once?”It wasn’t long before our teachers and organizations asked for the ability to create repeating classes. Some wanted to create a series of classes within a course, where the class occurs at the same day and time each week, and for the same set of students throughout the course.Others wanted the ability to set up multiple classes within a course on a set schedule, but that didn’t necessarily involve the same students each time. For example, a teacher might always want to meet at 3pm local time, but meet with different cohorts in different time zones separately, so that students in Hong Kong didn’t need to find a time that worked for students in California, even if they were learning the same content. It’s one thing for an instructor to accommodate students around the world; it’s another entirely for entire classes to accommodate each other.We introduced Recurring Classeson WizIQ to address these needs.  Now instead of having to create a new class every time you teach it, teachers and administrators can schedule a single class and set it to repeat at regular intervals, even if the attendees won’t be the same each time.Recurring classes are a hit among language teachers in particular. Some of our most popular teachers are Nadia Atya and George Machlan, and both use this feature to manage and organize their Arabic and ESL classes. The Recurring classes feature helps them:

• Schedule all of the recurring classes at once.
• Easily invite students to any of the classes within the recurring series from a single screen.

Creating recurring classes is easier on students, too. They get to see the whole recurring schedule at once, which makes it easy for them to plan and attend classes accordingly. A predictable schedule also helps students establish habits and rhythms conducive to learning.

Here are some more ways that our teachers and organizations are using recurring classes:

• Training organizations use recurring classes to schedule all of their online meetings in advance, so trainees see the schedule all at once and join the specific classes they plan to attend.
• Private online tutoring businesses use recurring classes to schedule a single class that occurs multiple times. Students select the single class from the list that best suits their schedule or know that they have regular sessions set up with their tutor.
• Organizations where different teachers handle different timezones or blocks (the equivalent of sections in a brick and mortar school), can create a separate set of recurring classes for each teacher. No one has to worry about missing a class, and the organization’s administrators are saved from having to create every individual class for every teacher.
• In large corporations with offices spread out globally, human resource departments are always training employees or scheduling induction programs for new recruits. They use recurring classes to schedule their ongoing programs all at once. Employees can pick the time slot that best suits their schedule.

To create a recurring class:

1. Log into WizIQ.
2. Click on the Teach tab.
3. Select Schedule a class.
4. Select Want to schedule a recurring class.
5. Fill in the required information.
6. Click Schedule and Continue.

What’s coming next?
We have new features for recurring classes on the way! Teachers using WizIQ through Moodle will soon be able to offer recurring classes on WizIQ directly through Moodle (in fact, by the time you read this post, this feature might already be up).

Ready to start your own recurring class series? Create one now! Then let us know how you’re using the recurring class feature, and what we can do to continue making scheduling classes easier. Recurring classes, by the way, are only available to our premium users and (as noted above, to Moodle users shortly). If this is a feature that you would like to use, but aren’t a premium member, feel free to contact sales@wiziq.com to upgrade.