Recruit highly trained and certified educators. The virtual school will be defined by the courses offered and the quality of information taught. These factors are directly controlled by the instructors who teach its courses, so select carefully. Verify with background and reference checks that your instructors have the level of teaching experience and education desired. Create a contract for teaching positions to ensure the consistency and reliability of the teaching staff. Include the manner of payment in the contract that determines whether instructors will be paid directly by students or given a percentage of the school's earnings. Some sites, such as tutorsource.com have students pay the site directly, then they pay the tutors a portion of what is earned. It's essential to determine whether you will use direct payment or offer salary paid directly from the school to the instructors before hiring and negotiating contracts.
Select a virtual classroom platform from those available. Try Moodle or Drupaled or any of the others available, and train all administrators and teachers on its use. Vigorously train employees on how to use the technology so that disorganization and malfunctioning technology do not interfere with the learning process. Purchase or gain access to secure, reliable hardware and online access for administrators and teachers. Incorporate virtual conferencing software to facilitate contact between members of the professional community and the administration.
Select, and integrate a payment platform such as PayPal, Mazooma, WizPay or TwitPay for students to pay for services easily and efficiently. Establish payment procedures and publish them clearly for all students to read and agree to before enrolling in courses. If your virtual school is not tuition-based, you may want to consider setting up a donation account with PayPal to assist with the school maintenance and employee compensation funds.
Acquire and verify the right to distribute access to end-users. Some platforms, Google Groups for example, only allow access for a certain number of end-users. Once this number is exceeded, access can be restricted for both the administrator and end-users to prevent spammers from illegally creating groups of users and blasting them with spam email. Each platform is different, so verify the platform specifications for use and distribution to ensure your school reaches the widest possible audience and doesn't get shut down in the process.