One of the most important benefits of Music Teachers Helper (MTH) is that students can look up information at their convenience: they can look up online when their next lesson is, what they did in their last lesson, what their payment situation is–and if you wish, they can look up alternative lesson times in case they need to schedule a makeup.
At this time of year, teachers are scheduling lessons for the fall, and MTH can make that much easier. Who hasn’t had to play phone tag or use multiple emails to schedule a lesson?
I’ve tried a few different approaches with MTH. One was to create events on the calendar that were global, open to all, showing when there were available lesson times. This had the benefit of being easily accessible to students, but the drawback was that most students didn’t need this information very often, and it cluttered up their own calendar, making it harder to view their own lesson information.
What I do now (though we would all appreciate hearing from you about your own experiments–just add a comment at the end of this post) involves a fictitious student named “Just Visiting.” It works well both for new students trying to schedule a first lesson, and for existing students needing to reschedule.
I enter available lesson times as if they were lessons scheduled for “Just Visiting”. This fictitious student has a very simple username and 4-character password. I periodically remind all my students that they can log in as “Just Visiting” if they need to see available lesson times.
When students view the available lesson times, they can then click on the lesson time that’s of interest to them. This opens the window where they can click on “Request Cancellation or Reschedule”. (MTH has been improved in this area–it used to only offer the option to send a cancellation request.) The student can then submit a request for the new lesson time, and you will receive it by email.
Again, the great service to both teacher and student here is that students can peruse available lesson times at their leisure, compare with their calendar and then submit their request to the teacher. As the teacher, you don’t have to have your schedule in mind when people ask, and you don’t have to go through a possibly long process of comparing your availabilities with those of the student. The students can do all this on their own, and it will match your schedule.
I use color coded Categories for different types of events. Available lesson times are colored a pale yellow. Scheduled lessons are bright blue. This makes it very easy for students to see their regular lessons on the schedule while still having the advantage of seeing all available times for re-scheduling when needed.
by Tina — Thu Aug 23, 2007 @ 3:08 pm
by Ed Pearlman — Fri Aug 31, 2007 @ 3:15 pm
I probably go a little overboard with color-coding, but I like being able to "see" at a glance what's going on with the schedule.
I use different colors for makeup lessons, canceled lessons, missed lessons, etc. I posted a couple of examples as PDFs.
Here's an example of what the teacher schedule looks like: Teacher's
schedule example. I can easily see what's available if I'm booking a new student by phone.
Of course students see only their own and available lessons, like this: Student's
schedule example. I usually leave the teacher's gigs/performances as publicly visible, in case students want to attend, but also because they seem to like seeing that their teacher is also a "working musician" (as if teaching wasn't enough work!).
by Tina — Wed Sep 5, 2007 @ 5:04 am
Is there an easier or faster way to show multiple time slots available, or do you have to just go in and input them one at a time? For example in the PDF I see one day where every time slot is open except maybe one or two. Did you have to put those in one at a time?
by Ron Cross — Tue Sep 25, 2007 @ 12:53 pm
Thanks -
Nick Pauldine, Ithaca, NY
by Nick Pauldine — Wed Sep 26, 2007 @ 7:04 am
I think the time only goes on the same line as the student name if the name is short enough to fit. Strikeouts happen if, when editing a lesson, you check off "Cancel this event" at the bottom, or if when reconciling the event, instead of marking it "attended" you mark it "cancelled". This means the student isn't charged for it and the strikeout is shown. "Missed" means the student is charged but didn't show up.
by Ed Pearlman — Wed Sep 26, 2007 @ 10:38 am
I recommend that you take a look at it if you are having any concerns about your present scheduling system. Although appointment-plus.com customer service is very helpful, I would be happy to answer any comments as to how this online scheduler has helped my business.
I think the biggest advantage is that our lessons are all sceduled online. After hours, I forward studio phone calls to my cell phone. If a parent calls to cancell a music lesson, I simply go online and make the change. The teacher will get an automatically generated e-mail as well.
There is a monthly charge for the service but it is only about $20 per month.
We also have the ability to allow students to go online and sign up for lessons... but I have not implemented this feature yet.
by Bob Collett — Sat Nov 3, 2007 @ 7:24 am
by Brandon Pearce (Support) — Sat Nov 3, 2007 @ 10:27 am