The following pie charts provide information about the methods international students employed when booking online English courses, including booking on arrival, pre-booking with an agent, Internet, and others, in three countries, Australia, USA, and Canada, in 2009 and 2010.
Overall, students’ preferences in methods of booking online English courses changed over the period. While the most notable changes was shown in Canada and Australia, the figures for methods used to book courses in USA remained almost unchanged. The most common way to book the course was pre-booking via an agent almost in all countries, except Australia where the Internet was the main source for booking.
The countries with remarkable changes in students’ booking preferences were Australia and Canada. The international students in Australia mostly made pre-bookings with an agent in 2009, with 27% students using this method. By the end of the 2010, the figure for pre-bookings with an agent experienced a significant drop to 11%. Regarding the figure for Internet, 26% of students chose this approach to book online courses in 2009. Then, the percentage of students using Internet to bookings increased significantly and became a clear front-runner in 2010, with 39% of students employing this method. As for the figures for offline booking and others, the percentages of people choosing these methods remained almost unchanged, with a negligible increase by 4% (from 26% to 30%) in booking on arrival and a slight fall by 3% (from 23% to 20%) in other options in 2010. Regarding Canada, it showed biggest changes in pre-booking with an agent and booking on arrival sections, with a rise by 13% and 19%, respectively.
By contrast, the figures for booking methods in the USA exhibited comparatively small changes. The figure for pre-booking method increased by 4% (from 24% to 28%), while the percentage of students booking via the Internet fell only by 1% (from 26% to 25%). The proportion of students booking on arrival remained unchanged with 24% of people employing this method in both 2009 and 2010. Regarding other methods, the share of students accounted for 26% in 2009, after which it decreased minimally to 23% by the end of the period.