Doing the $Math$

(or: how much better $ it is $ for you if you teach your course online)

Here's our hypothetical situation about you, teaching a course. Presume you now teach a single 3-hour course every month, with an average of 10 students.  You already know the amount of work it takes to prepare and teach that course: 

• In order to get enough students to make it worthwhile, you start advertising  (in a local PI newsletter, by direct mail, or some other way that costs you money; or by word of mouth, telling as many PIs you know that you'll be teaching a course; wait for people to call you). 

• Answer the phone, or call back each person who called showing an interest. Talk to them and convince them the course is worth taking. Take down the names of people who tell you they plan to attend. 

• Wait for each student to pay tuition, calling those who haven't paid before the deadline, or canceling those who haven't paid (or, collect the tuition at the door by manning the sign-in table, handling the student roster, and keeping the records. Hope the checks don't bounce).

• In the meantime, you look for a location where you can hold the course, and pay for it if there's a lease fee.

• Print out the handouts, course booklet (if there is one), and syllabus.

• Go to a copy store and have copies made of all of it.

• Get handouts ready for each student in some kind of binder, or stapled together, or??

• Prepare and print out a Certificate of Completion for each student who attends and finishes the course.

• On the day the course is scheduled, make or buy some coffee and donuts, cookies, or snacks. 

• Get your teaching material and class papers organized, prepare the student roster, handouts, flip-chart, drawing material, magic markers, pencils and pens, pads of paper for the students.

• Load it all in your car.

• Drive to the classroom early enough to make sure the room is unlocked and open, the tables and chairs are properly arranged, set out the handouts, prepare the "check-in" table with a sign-in sheet, pencils, clip-board...did you forget anything?

• Welcome the 10 or so students who have paid you $75 each, chit-chat a while as late stragglers come in.

• Teach the course, and hand out Certificates.

• Everything that's left at the end of the course, load back in your car, lock the classroom door, and drive back to your office.

• You've probably taken about 5+ hours to teach a 3-hour course (as you arrange, print, copy, and prepare the course; then set up and break down the classroom, teach the course, give the students break-times, and drive to and from class). 

• Drive back home, and rest. Earn $750 for that month. Now deduct your expenses for cost of copies, purchase of binders or folders, cost for renting the room, mileage and transportation, coffee, donuts, and whatever else you had to buy (like copy paper, toner, ink, pens, pencils, pads, and other incidentals).

• So, how much did you net for the year? You earned a total of about $9,000...minus expenses.

Now consider the same 3-hour course taught online.

Since you have the course ready to teach, anyway, all you have to do to get it online is to put it into a written format that we can understand. That might mean doing nothing, because you're so organized, and it's already written in a complete "book" form. Or, it might mean you have to take all your handwritten notes and scraps of paper, or all the thoughts in your head, and then type them into a format we can decipher, but gives the course the presentation you intend. 

From our end, we need the course title, an outline or syllabus, and the entire content of the course so we can prepare it onto an internet-based setting. Since you'll want to make your course interesting, one that holds the students' attention, you may also have to find photos, drawings, or clip-art we can add. 

But once it's all ready (you can call us every step of the way for suggestions and ideas), you'll send us the entire package (by email attachment, on a 3.5" disk, or sending us a hardcopy by mail or Federal Express). 

You retain ownership and Copyright of everything you send us. Forever!

PLEASE NOTE:  We won't steal or use any part of your work for ourselves. The course is yours, not ours. Try to think of CatsEye as another school, college or university, as an institution with several instructors. We're simply the school. You are the instructor. The two of us will enter into a contract for you to "teach the course", even though you won't actually be "teaching" it, since it will all be automated and online. CatsEye is simply the institution to which students come when they want to take a continuing education training course. The course is yours, and YOU are the instructor.

Anyway, once we receive your material, we prepare your course using web-based applications to enhance it and make it interactive for the student. After we finish the technical work, we'll contact you to tell you it's ready for you to review and edit.  From that point on, we'll communicate with each other back and forth until the course meets your requirements and expectations. Once you approve of the course, then we'll put it online, and begin marketing to every Private Investigator in the state. So every time we send out any information about us, they'll have a chance to learn about you and your course. 

For you, that's continuous FREE advertising!!

Now let's say your course is online. There are at least 5,000, and possibly as many as 9,000 licensed private investigators. Let's take the lower figure of 5,000. Assuming that only three percent (3%) of them take your course (that's 150 people a year), and you charge the same tuition (still $75 per student), your course has earned $11,250, which is already more than you earned after all your hard work.  Except now, we deduct our percentage, and you have no other expenses or hassles like you did when you taught the course in a classroom. And that's if only 3% of them take your course. 

Now do the math if 10% of them take your course (that's 500 people, still at $75 per student): 

This time your course pays you $18,750, or twice what you had earned giving lectures!  And that's only private investigators in Texas, and if only 10% of them take the course. Plus, you didn't have to go anywhere to earn it !!

Now extend that figure to a higher percentage of PIs taking your course, or what if you had two courses instead of one, or had more hours per course, or what if you were going to make it available to all the security personnel and peace officers in Texas who are also required to take Continuing Education courses?  

Now, extend those figures to 3 more states that approve PI-CEU for their licensed P.I.s.... or to 10 other states.... or 20 other states. 

Can you keep up?

Get with our program! Contact us for more details.