A system and method for providing private message monitoring in a virtual class session monitors student private messages using natural language processing. The system is configured to communicatively couple a teacher computer, one or more student computers, and a web server over the Internet. The web server captures a private message between a first student computer and a second student computer, extract message text from the private message, process the extracted message text using natural language processing to identify a message topic, and when the message topic is not a current topic in a virtual class session, transmit a message to the first student computer and the second student computer to stay on topic of the virtual class session.