I was in a class where there were 3 students registered. One of the students dropped out after a few minutes. After that "another student " joined , i put that in inverted commas as it must have been the first student who changed the name as there were only 3 students registered . The individual started by giving a name in Mandarin, and asked the Teacher what it meant but she refused to repeat it and said it was not good, It was obviously some profanity as he was giggling. The student became disruptive shouting profanities and interrupting the class and insulting us the students with slurs . The teacher muted and eventually kicked the person out. This individual kept on coming back into the class several times, and kept changing their name but the same person - this is why i think it was the initial student. I am not sure what support LTL the teachers can be given in terms of blocking and reporting such students as it took a lot of time to get the person out and they kept coming back in. I have attached the class and the name of the student that dropped off . If it is this person can they please be warned or something, as i am not sure if someone can enter the zoom call without been on the platform .
Sorry to hear about your poor experience! There is a potential for abuse in any service or platform. Technically, this or any other user can create an account and get 3 free classes and continue trolling.
Fortunately, when this happens, it should be easy for the teacher to enable waiting room in Zoom and only let legitimate students join. That should hopefully take care of the problem (until they discover Forums and come to spam us here).
Sounds awful! Nothing like that has ever happened to me in LTL classes, but I remember something like that happened in a Duolingo Zoom group about 18 months ago. There were probably 10 or so people in the group. The teacher / group host couldn’t block the troll because they kept disappearing and reappearing so quickly (with different names?). It was really annoying, as the troll was sending students obscene private chat messages for what seemed like five minutes. The whole class was a bit upset by it. I’m glad that’s the only time that’s ever happened to me.
Kelly
I am sorry somehow my message didn’t send.
I am very sorry about this terrible experience and it is definitely a first for us, it should never have happened.
I forwarded your message to our Support Team as an urgent notice, and I thank you for bringing it up to our attention here.
That’s great to know that there is a way to control it . Was just giving the heads up , as the teacher initially was not sure how to deal with it. Hopefully wont happen again
Thanks so much for reporting this and the quick replies @Kelly-Mandarin-HSK_3 and @Ben-Mandarin-HSK_5
I am on this and this will be resolved. Dont worry it wont happen again.
Its the first time I heard of something like this happening on Flexi Classes. I dont think it will happen again (definitely not with that student account), but in case, please report here too. We have 0 tolerance for profanities or impoliteness towards our teachers or other students during class.