This will be kind of a weird update. I will not be teaching what I learned in my immersion class. Part of that is because I don’t really like the guy teaching the course. Part of that is I signed a form saying I wouldn’t reveal anything he teaches for… 4 years? Wow that seems like weird number. So, in the spirit of not getting sued I will reveal what I learned that I can talk about. Mostly what I learned about learning from the class.
To start I know I always tell people not to take on line classes for an immersion class because it’s worse than an in-person class. This was an online class. It has been weighing on me for a while now that I have never actually tested this. Law 10 and all. So, I decided to follow 1 Thessalonians 5:21 advice and test it.
Here was what I was expecting to find.
- Poorly done class material
- No way to contact the teacher reliable
- No way to contact fellow members reliable
- Confusing material in a few places
- A lot of good business advice I can go test
The Good
What I actually found was a little different. The material was actually well laid out, even if the teacher was kind of a scum bag, and easy to understand all the way through. At no point did I get lost as he just kept going. He made a point of saying I’m going to try and overteach (I know not a word despite what this says) all of this. I want you all to understand it. If you don’t get all of it, I didn’t do my job.
There was a reliable way to contact the teacher but it was very slow. You could expect to wait a month before you would hear from him. When I tried to contact him, I was given a month before I could get him on the phone. He does not do email so the only other way would have been snail mail.
There were also a few people who got to be there live. I found this very helpful. They got to ask questions and I could get an idea of what kind of problems I would be facing in the future as well as how to solve them. So, it was not as bad as I thought it would be.
The Bad
This does not mean I recommend it.
I still don’t.
There was still no way to make friends with anyone in the class. This alone makes me wary of doing this. It is very important to find other people to help and encourage you as a life long learner. But that was not the only problem.
This one really threw me for a loop. After the class was over, I sat down and went over my notes to find that, I had written down maybe a page and a half of things to do. That was it. unlike past classes where I just kept righting I had very little material from this one. We had been there for hours but had gotten very little out of it.
Now I can’t say the class was not worth the money. I still need to test what I learned in the class to know that. For all I know he just cut out the fluff. But this was enough to make me shrink back from taking another online immersion class again.
The Further Testing
So, time for my conclusion. Are you ready? Great. I… am more unsure that taking immersion classes online is a horrible idea. I have put a lot of thought into this and think it might be worthwhile if a few conditions are met.
First and foremost, you need a way to contact other students. A set class time would really help with this. The recording I got was OK, but it would make it hard to get online with other students taking the class. Without this I don’t think anyone will find the people they need to make friends with.
I had a few other minor things I wanted to test too.
- Would having the teacher live make it better for asking questions or would a recoding work?
- If they gave you the material for the class, so you could get an overview before going through it help?
- Would several small classes be better than one really big one?
- How long can you really go remembering all your questions before you need to talk to the teacher?
So, there you have it. what I learned from my immersion class in 2019. If you would like more great content like this check out my YouTube channel here!