Confucius Institute Online's "Live Class"

[msittig]

I'm not sure how new this is, but I haven't been able to find any previous discussion/mention of it, so here goes. The Confucius Institute Online has a website called "Live Class" (http://liveclass.chinesecio.com/) where native Chinese teachers use an online interface to teach a class on Chinese language, culture, HSK prep, etc. The classes are free for anybody to register and participate, and the teachers are Confucius Institute teachers from all over the world.
 
The interface has streaming video of the instructor who is leading the class live, a window for the instructor to project a slide show, and a chat window for teacher and students to interact. It also has a feature where students can speak to the class, but I didn't see it used so I'm not sure how it works exactly. Screenshot here:
 

 
I tried out about a dozen of the classes over the course of 40 minutes or so.
 
The good:

• It's free.
• During those 40 minutes (daytime in China, night in the US) there were usually 3 or 4 classes running at a time.
• The classes are short, 10-15 minutes.
• There are a lot of topics to choose from, and teachers who teach in English, Korean, Japanese, etc.
• The search tool can find classes by topic, language, teacher, etc.
• One teacher put fill-in-the-blank/right-or-wrong questions into her presentation.

That said, the bad:

• Most teachers just read from a script as they flip through a slide deck.
• The sound quality is *bad*.
• The website/class interface is built to be interactive, but I saw no interaction in any of the classes I listened to.
• There are a lot of classes about Chinese culture, language, etc, that are taught entirely in Chinese, very few beginner classes in English.
• Basically no pinyin was used in any of the classes.
• Most of the participants were anonymous users and didn't really participate, just sat and listened.

Tips:

• The one teacher I thought was OK was 杨茗焜, so if she's online check out her classes. She does mostly intermediate level grammar.
• Try interacting with the teachers through the chat, they really appreciate it. It's fun to type something and see them smile or respond.
• The username you register as will be your display name in class, so think carefully about the name you choose. If you choose a Chinese name, it will be easier for the teacher to call on you or answer your questions.

If the Confucius can improve the pedagogy of the teachers using the site to be more interactive, increase the number of real life people using the site, and improve the sound quality so that pronunciation can be taught better, it would be a resource worth using.  But at this point, it's not something that I'll be using regularly. I think other language learning websites that encourage more interaction would be more effective for learning Chinese, for example Lang-8 and italki.

[Mouseneb]

Needs flash, so don't try accessing through your iPad like I just did ;)

[roddy]

Ha, interesting. I'm about to watch a Cooking and Chinese class

http://liveclass.chinesecio.com/Public/classInfo.html?id=101416

Woah, you're not wrong about the audio....ah man, he's getting food all over his keyboard...ok, think I might move on...idioms one seems to be some guy reading out slides about idioms. 

 

This is an interesting idea, but I'm not sure the execution is ideal. Anyone hit any better classes?

[roddy]

Found an HSK5 practice class by a teacher named 冯雪 which is better - it's a bit like sitting in a Chinese university classroom, rather than getting a full multimedia experience, but I can see people getting value out of it. 

[pancake]

I had a quick look and, while I think the idea is great, the execution could be better. I don't understand why the supposedly "advanced" classes are not exclusively in Chinese; having slides that are mixed English and Chinese is hugely distracting to me. I end up just reading the English explanations and not learning much Chinese. Also, did anyone else have problems getting the audio to work?

[muirm]

These are kind of fun. I watched one where the teacher was playing a clip from youku, then pausing and discussing chengyu that came up. It seemed to be a movie about 孙膑 being forced to write out his 兵法. The teacher explained 插翅难飞 and 故伎重演 while I was watching. Plus no one else participates, so you can ask questions and get the teacher's full attention.

[abhoriel]

The sound quality is generally bad. With dome teachers it's much better than others though, I guess it depends on the microphone they ate using somewhat. The usefulness varies greatly from teacher to teacher and lesson to lesson. If you can find a good lesson series that matches your level I reckon you could learn quite a lot.

I recommend taking advantage of its interactiveness as OP suggests. Choose a Chinese name and say/type things. Some teachers will directly involve you and ask you questions when they realise that you are interacting with them. As very few others bother, you can learn a lot.

[Liu Laoshi]

Do you want to learn Chinese for travel or for business or just as a hobby but you don't have enough time?Now you can learn Chinese with me online!
I am a experienced Chinese teacher and I teached Chinese abroad for one year.Now I am a teacher of Confutious Institute Online,a website established by Chinese government to help foreigners to learn Chinese.I teach Chinese culture,Chinese grammar,Chinese communication and HSK lessons everyday.If you want to learn Chinese,come to my website,and it's totally free!Yes,totally!
Here is the link,keep it,then you can find my classes!
http://liveclass.chinesecio.com/Public/classes.html?teacher_id=8296037
If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to add my wechat or kakao account : nascency and here is my E-mail liushuo891@163.com.I hope I can help you!

[roddy]

Merged the above post, and will take the opportunity to ask if anyone's been using the site regularly?

[Liu Laoshi]

Thank you for moving my post to the right place, administrator.

There are many Chinese learners using this website, now.My online students come from Romania, Spain, Japan, Indonesia and other places.So, I came here to try to find some more foreign students.As you know, different students from different countries can make different practical faults because of the influnce of their mother languages.To contact more students from different countries can will allow me to understand their different characteristics and try to deal with them.

So if you know someone is learning Chinese and wants to study online, please recommend my class to him or her .  I will do my best to help him or her ^ ^.

[roddy]

And tell your students about this site! They can post here about your class. 

[Liu Laoshi]

Okay,I will.I am so glad I can find a Chinese Learning forum.I have been on lang-8 helping the students to correct their compositions before. I can help the foreign students here by answeing their questions,too.