Open Education Employee Reviews about "open english"

Cons

An unreliable platform, poor leadership more interested in becoming television personas than learning operations and employee development is the cause of their problems. The CEO is a delisional wannabe ZAPPOS groupie obsessed with imitating American self-help cons and tv commercials. Such an impressionable leader breeds an unstable, emotionally driven leadership climate filled with 'yes men' intent on telling the egotistical CEO what he wants to hear. After working with these people, researching the nightlife habits of their CEO, I came to one conclusion about their narcissistic CEO- con artist. Buy low, pay little, keep overhead low and sell high to anyone willing to gamble investment cash on slick, knock-off commercials and public relations stories which lack investigative journalism. This is not a start-up at this point. It is a series of mistakes backtracking and reinventing itself to keep investors hoping that Open English leadership wises up and realizes that a CEO that wants to be a movie star or celebrity more than he knows how to run the actual operations of the business will struggle. Unfortunately, all one has to do is speak with the customers of this service to see that this language instruction outfit does not deliver what it sells. Eventually the proof will emerge in the outcomes of customer feedback. Like most scenarios like this, voices of low income customers seeking to 'live better lives by learning English' will not be heard in English.

Cons

The flip side of the opportunity to innovate and create is the responsibility of doing exactly that. Communication of activities and expectations may sometimes fall out of alignment; however, self-starters who are drawn to innovative, imaginative work settings must commit to and persevere in improving communication in any setting, whether at Open English or elsewhere.

Cons

* Low pay * No career advancement * Open English allowed my personal information and identity to be stolen after I was onboarded, but denied there was a data security breach. Cyber thief filed for unemployment saying I was let go by Open English. * Allowed to work only part-time hours, up to 26 hours per week since Open English doesn't want to full time salaries and benefits * When hired, Open English stated in its training that teachers can only speak English in class and don't need to provide native language support. This is not true. * Open English doesn't value and develop its teaching talent. * Even when a teacher is knowledgeable, multilingual, and dedicated, teacher is treated as a disposable number and replaced by anyone. * Customers complain about most of teachers speaking only English. * Open English is a private corporation rather than an educational institution, so students are customers. Open English treats the customers like they're always right. Customers who speak no English can complain about everything and blame the teacher. Customers who get offended while being taught will complain about not being praised enough. Open English treats complainers as if they are the majority of customers. * Open English offers no platform for when students want to praise teachers. * Teachers can't teach. Teachers have to flatter and praise, but even when they do they can still get complaints. Teachers expected to please customers 100% of time and are condemned when they receive complaints from unreasonable customers. * Open English Quality Control specialist can give feedback like 'Smile more so that you don't scare the students' and 'Cover more class material', but not acknowledge that the customers are being taught. Open English Quality Control specialist will look for classes that were outliers and say the teacher should be able to handle any and every situation without offering strategies on dealing with unusual situations. * In 2017 Open English sent a directive telling teachers to not speak in class and to let the customers do all the talking. The teacher was supposed to direct class from the classroom chat box. A customer complained. The teacher was reviewed for anything wrong he had done and put on a performance improvement plan. That directive was dropped and Open English behaved as if it had never been issued. * Open English administrators can't teach, but they can criticize, second guess, nit pick, and judge. Open English administrators can criticize teachers as if teachers aren't trying to do their best (for low pay). * Customers only given a video tour of class platform. Customers not given an idea of how classes are run beforehand. * Open English class material assumes that customers have basic English knowledge. When the customer speaks little or no English, everything goes out the wayside and the customer can get upset and give the teacher a bad rating. * Customers say that they are charged a lot of money and they see commercials in their countries that say Open English classes will teach them English skills from the ground up. * Customers take an initial English assessment and receive a preliminary rating. Customers have ratings of 1 (lowest) to 8 (highest). Not all Level 1 customers are the same. Some Level 1 customers can participate in English conversations. Most Level 1 customers speak little to no English and need more help than can be offered in class, especially when they're in a group. A number of customers who get initial ratings of Level 2 or 3 speak no English. The English assessment test is flawed. * Customers who complete Open English classes say they need more learning.lete Open English classes say they need more learning.lete Open English classes say they need more learning.

Cons

I began with Open English as a Live Instructor, and became an Online Mentor after about a year. I was thrilled to be part of a small team of mentors that had private classes with students- students were offered a free private class once a month, where they could ask anything they wanted. This gave us mentors the ability to create individual classes that really fit student needs, and it remains one of the best online working experiences I have had. So what happened? In December 2013, things started to go downhill. Live Instructors began getting a lot less hours, people were complaining. I think we all knew in our department that changes were going to be made, but were unaware that they would FIRE THE WHOLE DEPARTMENT! We were beyond shocked. You dont need an MBA to figure out that you dont fire teachers who are all specialized in their fields, are hard to replace, and consistently received excellent reviews from students. We calmed students who were having trouble in their classes, we helped students get back on track, we created individual study plans for students who had lost faith in learning English. And they got rid of us. They didnt even consider that they could have asked our advice on how to save the department, or encourage students to attend more classes. To Open English its clear that every teacher is replaceable, just another cog in the machine. But you know what? The Open English method- treat students and professors badly- isnt a long term strategy. I have my own private students now and they are always tell me they are so happy to find QUALITY English classes online, and to be respected as students. Open English, if you cared about your teachers and students, and stopped worrying about maximum profit, maybe you will actually survive another year.

Cons

As expected in any start-up the past few years have seen its ups and downs as the focus of the company changes and competitors come into the market place making it ever so necessary to move fast and change quickly. Over the past year everything has been moving in a positive direction. This would not be a great option for someone who needs more structure in their work day, as the environment is often changing and new things are tested. After the high growth point, the company has now moved into a steady process of execution and growth… this did eliminate the need for many team members which was a big disruption last year. Over the past year, however, everything and everyone are in the right roles to grow the company to great success.

Cons

This company has completely gone downhill. I used to love telling everyone I know about how great Open English was. Now I'm ashamed to even mention it! Andres Moreno could have never been so successful without all of our hard work and effort. We teachers deserve to have been paid much, much, better. You see, Open English thinks they can pay us close to nothing just because most of our teachers are humble expats living abroad where the cost of living is not high. The truth is It's not fair to any of the teachers..... no matter where they are living! We are the ones who made this company so great (at one time it was great, not now). Ever since around November of 2013 this company has made one bad choice after another leading to both dissatisfied students and teachers. We used to have around 3 students per class until Open English got greedy and decided to cut most of our teachers and instead stuff 9 students into one class. Bad choice. I really feel sorry for the students and I can see why many are now leaving. We used to be given pretty much as many hours as we would like to work. Now we're fortunate to even get 5 hours a week. Also in an effort to make us more like 'independent contractors' instead of 'employees' (which they refuse to call us yet still treat us like them), management has attempted to completely cut off our social communication with other teachers and also erased YEARS, upon YEARS of vital teaching tips and information that everyone used to enjoy and contribute to. Makes me sick to even think about it! Oh yeah and they randomly decide to drop teachers every 3 months. Even the best teachers who have been with the company the longest are not safe. Many were recently let go so Open English can continue to be greedy. Andres Moreno I hope you are reading this. Please make things go back to the way they were last year. Things are so ridiculous now that it sometimes seems this is all one big joke and someone is playing a trick on us teachers. Sadly I don't think that's the case. I truly loved this company at one time and even writing this review makes me deeply sad. But it had to be done. Thank you.