4 Useful Things You Can Do With Lesson Recordings
Earlier this year, we released our lesson recording feature. As a tutor, you may not have had as many opportunities to use it as your students, but there are actually quite a few things you can do with it.
Today, we'll go over four ways tutors can make use of the lesson recordings.
But first, where are the recordings?
The recording for each lesson can be accessed on the lesson page. If you have just finished a lesson, simply refresh the lesson page, and you will see an audio player that looks like this:
To access recordings of previous lessons:
- Go to the Lesson Details Page.
- Click on the "Go to the lesson page" button underneath the lesson you want to access.
1. Write lesson notes
Have you ever needed to write lesson notes several hours after a lesson? Or are you the type of tutor who writes lesson notes at the end of the day?
If so, you know how hard it can be to remember what happened in each lesson — especially if you had some new students.
Now, in addition to the chatbox, you can use recordings to remind yourself of how the lessons went and what vocabulary and feedback you can write in your lesson notes.
You may not even need to listen to the whole lesson to jog your memory!
I'll usually listen to the last 30-45 seconds of the lesson recording to jog my memory of the advice I gave the student. Then I'll expand on that advice in my lesson notes.
Anonymous | Engoo Tutor from Croatia
Related article: How to Write Great Lesson Notes
2. Personal reflection
If you've ever wanted to know how much you've grown as an online tutor, the answer is in your recordings. Just listen to some recordings from a few months ago, and you'll immediately notice some differences.
For example, you might sound more confident or speak more clearly. Or maybe you got funnier or better at asking follow-up questions. Whatever the case, give yourself a pat on the back!
You may also discover some things you want to improve. For example, you might notice that you speak too quickly when you get excited, blurring your speech. Or you may notice that you sound unfriendly when you don't mean to.
When reviewing some recordings, I noticed that I got annoyed during a discussion, because I felt frustrated with the student's opinion. This is definitely something I want to work on.
Anonymous | Engoo Tutor from the US
3. Provide more customized instruction
If you teach a student every day, it can be hard to notice progress since it happens very gradually. Reviewing the recordings over time can give you a clearer idea of the student's long-term development as well as their strengths and weaknesses.
With this new information, you'll be better equipped to customize your teaching and provide more professional feedback.
With some regular students, it's easy to run out of helpful feedback — especially if I see them almost every day and the student is already intermediate or advanced. So I listen to recordings every now and then to get a better idea of how they've improved and what they can do better.
Anonymous | Engoo Tutor from the Philippines
4. Report issues
We hope you never encounter any questionable or problematic student behaviors. However, if you do, you can now report these to Tutor Support (TS) with the help of the lesson recordings. Here's how:
- Specify the lesson time in Japan Standard Time (JST) so that TS can quickly find it on your profile.
- Specify the time at which the issue occurred: e.g. "Please check 5'33''.
👋 That’s it for now
We hope this post gave you some helpful ideas for making use of our new lesson recording feature. If you think of other ways to use them, please don't hesitate to let us know through Tutor Support. Happy Tutoring!