Are you an independent Tutor?

Why MAQ?

MAQLearnOnline is here to support you and your students in your learning journey.  MAQ operated by LearnOnline Platforms Pty Ltd, which is owned by Mark Ingram. Mark wants MAQ to support independent tutors to ‘be their best’.  MAQ supports tutors to get online, does some of your basic admin, but leaves you to run your own business as an individual.  MAQ is a service for tutors: students contract with their tutor.  MAQ only offers non-electronically delivered services – which means your course must offer either or both of individual student support or student marking services.

So how do we do all this?  MAQ provides a cheap, efficient eLearning platform for your IP, eCommerce services, technical assistance, and aspires to create a mutually supportive tutor community.  Your IP remains yours.  MAQ works with tutors to ensure you offer an excellent service to students. 

Our commitment begins on day one.  We help you get online even though you own the associated IP (and no, you do not grant MAQ a perpetual license!).  We think you’ll stay with us as long as its in your interests to do so: unlike most platforms in this space we are not building our own brand at your expense, and exit barriers are low – e.g. you are able to download your course for use elsewhere at any time .

Do you want to be a film star? (Really?)

When an actor makes a movie they give the owner of the film the right to use the actor’s name and image forever (a perpetual license).  A similar thing happens to an author when they sign to a publisher.

There is a ‘tuition’ business model that specialises is getting a tutor to do a recording ‘to advertise a course’.  The tutor may even work with the platform for a while.  But eventually, sooner or later, they ‘part company’.  (In the worst cases, the tutor may be paid a minimal sum, or nothing at all, to make a ‘taster’). But, to the tutor’s surprise, the tutor’s image, name and reputation continues to be used to market a course the tutor is no longer associated with.  The course is ‘supported’ by anonymous ‘tutors’ of varying quality.  That’s perfectly legal – but rather frustrating for the tutor, whose name/brand is now associated with a less than perfect course. So be very wary of companies looking for you to record ‘tasters’, or firms to which you give a license ‘in perpetuity’ to use your name and image.  It’s a mistake you may regret for a long time.

‘Our’ tutors

MAQ only has the capacity to onboard a small number of tutors each season.  We cannot, sadly, say yes to all.  So who do we say yes to?

You’ll be enthusiastic about ‘building your own brand’.  Being a tutor on MAQ is a business, not a job, and marketing is a big part of this.  You are likely to already be, or soon will be, active on social media and to have your own website.

You’ll have great training skills: you’ll likely have been teaching at 5+ years and have a solid reputation with your students evidenced by social media / student testimonials.  You’ll be committed to teaching development and rapid, high quality, personalised student support.  You’ll know the professional exam(s) you train in detail.  You’ll likely have, or want to have, your own notes, as ‘standard’ notes don’t always bring out the best in your students.  You’ll feel ‘limited’ by the standardised approach of the big providers.  You’ll already have big ideas about how you can make learning better.

You’ll understand there’s a lot of new skills to learn, plus lots of plain hard work to do when setting up your course and the supporting infrastructure.  You’ll see that as an exciting opportunity.

What MAQ does

We take care of many of your online headaches.  MAQLearnOnline:

  • maintains a ‘study site’ using Moodle.  Moodle is used by many Universities, so will be familiar to many of your potential students.  It is designed for easy use by tutors.  You’ll barely scratch the surface of it’s potential, which stretches from simple hosting of pdf docs, videos and quizzes to gamification and the like.  Moodle doesn’t lock you in to MAQ.  Your IP remains yours, and you can download a backup of your course at any time (indeed, we encourage you to do so).
  • offers basic IT support to your students to access your courses.
  • offers basic video editing and hosting services, unless / until you choose to do this for yourself.
  • offers eLearning support to you, particularly in your first couple of seasons.  We’ll help you with hardware choice, video recording and editing, course structuring, product development etc. etc.
  • maintains an eCommerce site with auto enrolment on your Moodle course via Stripe / auto-notification to you of all sales. Your courses are delivered under our standard student terms and conditions, which includes a standard complaints procedure.
  • collects student feedback for your courses.
  • acts as arbitrator in case of conflict between you and a student (this is a rare event, but when it happens we have a 100% success rate).
  • maintains a personal presence for you via your tutor page / product pages: but remember, you’re building your own brand, so most tutors also have their own website.

What we don’t do

We don’t market on your behalf.  MAQ is designed for independent tutors wishing to build their own brand / retain their own IP / offer top quality tuition to a high standard, so it would rather defeat the purpose if our primary objective was for us to compete with our tutors to build our brand.  We do share information on how to market, and we can co-ordinate collective marketing by tutors who use our services at their request.

We don’t register you for or submit sales tax or other tax obligations on your behalf.  We can ‘point you in the right direction’ on these obligations, but we do not offer formal tax advice.

We don’t tell you how to teach in detail, although we do have minimum ‘standards’, and if you ask we’ll make suggestions. Mark has been a lead BPP course material creator, ACT lead classroom material creator, and a respected tutor for 30 years: but every top tutor is unique, so we encourage you to innovate and do what you do best. 

 

Our introductory offer

Setting up your first online course involves heavy investment. So our introductory offer covers our ‘manual services’:

  • advise on your training options, course configuration options, hardware needs and detailed delivery choices,
  • helping you set up your first season’s Moodle courses,
  • edit, render, host and embed your training videos into your course,
  • onboard you to the MAQ eCommerce site (setting up your tutor and product pages, contact page, any discount coupons etc.),
  • manually intervene to complete sales, create discount coupons, etc.

We do all the above for free for the 6 months following you signing with us – as long as you launch within that timeframe.  This involves us in dozens of hours of work for each new tutor that launches.  This limits the number of tutors we can launch in any period of time.

 

Our charges

We charge:

  • 10% of your gross (before any discounts) class fees.
  • any direct costs you incur via us: primarily Stripe collection fees, at cost.
  • after your introductory period, for the ‘manual’ services covered in our introductory offer (broadly at their cost to us).
  • agreed fees for any additional work

Typically tutors pay between 11% and 14% of their revenues to MAQ, including these fees.

 

Student data/invoicing/payments/VAT/GST/IGST

Once your course goes live, you are auto emailed details of each booking immediately.  You have access to the names and emails of all students enrolled on your courses.  We issue students an invoice on your behalf and provide you with monthly statements.  For your first year we remit what is due to you 10 days after the start of the calendar month in which your course exam is sat.  Thereafter we remit fees monthly, less a security deposit.  Whilst you are responsible for VAT/GST/IGST, most UK tutors are outside UK VAT (unless they employ staff).

 

Your prices

MAQ tutors should offer a top, responsive service to students, which is impossible to do ‘on the cheap’.  MAQ does not support ‘fully automated education’: the tutor/student relationship is seen to be core, and providing a one to one query service is a requirement.  So whilst pricing is primarily your decision, MAQ reserves the right to decline to host courses whose pricing / service levels do not accord with the MAQ philosophy.

 

Other Services

Moodle Support: We can help you manage your courses / help you utilise the more subtle parts of Moodle / duplicate courses /  set up quizzes, progress bars, chat rooms etc.  We expect you to do this for youself in the longer term though: we are here to make you independent, not provide ongoing moodle services.

Video: recording, editing and hosting.  We can:

  • edit (‘slice and dice’/add text/intro/logos etc) your videos/webinars,
  • create video question banks, video text books etc.,
  • our sister company, Alleycats Films, can create marketing/broadcast quality content,
  • we have a digital marketer who works with our tutors on their websites, social media, designs etc if needed.

Other services: please ask – we are here to help.