What are Hybrid English classes?
Whilst throwing the whole world into turmoil, the Covid pandemic has also facilitated some truly innovative developments. Undeniably this crisis has also caused untold damage, but we mustn’t ignore the fact that in many ways business will be much better and stronger as a result. For example, working from home now enjoys increased credibility, and rightly so. Some business commentators claim that small businesses have achieved three years of innovation in just three months. Businesses have proved their ability to make decisions and diversify at speed, paving the way for more agile innovation in the future.
As Klaus Schwab, Founder & Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum, rightly says:
“In the new world it’s not the big fish which eat the small fish, but the fast fish which eat the slow fish.”
This resonates perfectly with the experience of the English language industry, which has had to turn swiftly to technology in order to transition smoothly to online learning. IH Manchester was an early adopter of online learning, pivoting quickly to prepare both teachers and students for this new way forward.
Many schools are now excitedly preparing to return to Face To Face (F2F) lessons, and have been busy making the learning environment safe for both students and staff. Of course, we at IH Manchester have been doing the same. However, we take a pragmatic view of the “new normal” and have planned accordingly. It is very likely that until an effective vaccine is found and widely administered, local outbreaks of Covid will continue to interrupt face to face teaching and everyday life. We believe that agents, students and parents are also very well aware of this. So, with this in mind we have focused on developing the sustainability of our offer.
Thanks to the resourcefulness of the IH Manchester academic team, we currently have a very strong online offer. IH Manchester has now got a total of 5 online classes full of students, enrolled throughout the day, and as students continue to extend and new bookings join them, numbers continue to grow. We were always committed to online learning for the long term, we wanted to keep our highly valued teaching team actively employed. These results have only confirmed that this was the right decision for us as a school. Online learning will continue to be developed by us and to play a prominent part in our offer.
From the start of this crisis we have been researching and testing the best way to deliver “hybrid classes”. We experienced this briefly in the week before lockdown. Many students felt uncomfortable making the daily journey into school and so remained at home with their host families. A few brave souls still turned up for class. So, our teachers taught the F2F students in class whilst also teaching those at home via Zoom. This was an emergency provision, a temporary stop gap before schools were closed and everything went fully online. But we learnt so much from this week.
We are now ready to bring all our teachers back into school from Monday 27 July, from where they will start to teach our online classes. By Monday 3 August our F2F students will join these same classes in school, in the classroom, with their teacher.
So, why not join our live online demonstration of exactly how this works? You will be able to see what it will look and sound like. We have a webinar scheduled for Thursday 30 July at 16.30 hrs UK time.
Learn more about our English courses, both online and in school in Manchester:
General English Lessons
IELTS Preparation
Professional English
Medical English OET
