The COVID-19 pandemic completely altered ELAM’s methods of operation in 2020 and 2021. In the latter part of 2020, the Pew Research Center reported that approximately 71% of employed adults worked from home, up from just 20% before the outbreak. As of 2022, some regions of the world are gradually returning to normalcy, but many businesses are closing their doors. They have realized how cost-effective remote business management can be while assuring the staff’s work is up to par! As for ELAM, even before 2020, we were about 50% based online, especially giving classes to our clients in England, the US, and Hong Kong! That did not make it an easy task for us to move all our classes online when the first lockdown began. Over 500 students enrolled for the winter session in 2020 made it challenging for our administrative team to transfer online only because we were looking for the best online teaching platform. Zoom, Teams, and LearnCube were all options we needed to consider, especially when moving over 500 students and 100 teachers to one learning platform! We soon learned about Zoom Education, the best option, with its interactive whiteboard, focus features, and numerous other options enhancing our language classes. The entire platform goes beyond what happens in a face-to-face classroom setting.
Fast forward to 2022, our classes are 98% online, with a small percentage doing face-to-face courses in downtown Montreal. Our customer satisfaction rate is still 4.78 out of the five range, so we know we are doing something right! Even though the pandemic is dying, many of our recurring and new clients are opting for online classes with ELAM rather than in-person for many reasons:
1. It is cost-efficient as it is less expensive to do online courses and requires no travel time. It’s a greener solution to language training.
2. It’s a lot less complicated to schedule group classes when all the employees are located globally! Face-to-face courses can only be done with employees from the exact office location.
3. No need to find conference rooms anymore, as Zoom is your virtual conference room!
We have increased our program types to better suit students’ needs, schedules and levels.
The last two years have been a challenge. Still, ELAM has successfully made lemonade out of lemons and is well on its way to becoming an international language school offering virtual classes to employees worldwide! We currently have students in Canada, the US, Mexico, Chile, Brazil, the UK, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, India, and the United Arab Emirates, to name a few!
