Tips for Online Teachers

Tips for Online Teachers

Education industry is experiencing stagnation; Universities are closing worldwide. Students, children are losing out the knowledge that they were supposed to get from the schools, colleges, and universities as the world is affected with a pandemic. This is forcing instructors to turn to remote teaching. In order to embrace the online teaching, the instructors need to follow some of the tips which would make the students life but easier.

Online teaching is not an easy task, this transition requires lot of work and patience, whereby teachers should know the technology and should identify the best teaching tactics.

Tips for the transitions: As faculty members worldwide face online teaching, they must consider how to maximize value for their students’. Here are few tips for embracing the same

• Don’t convert your entire lecture to video: students don’t want to watch slides without a teacher’s face or voice, Research has shown that lecture videos that show instructors faces are more effective than simple narrated slideshows. Intersperse your slides with video of yourself.
• Keep videos short: videos longer than 15 minutes can cause issues of slow downloading and learner distraction.
• Test out slides: make sure you test slides on a smartphone before shooting your lectures so all text is readable on small screens. Font sizes, colors, template designs and screen ratio can be double checked.
• Provide interactive activities: Most learning management systems, such as Moodle, Edmodo and Black board, include a range of functions to create interactive learning activities such as quizzes.
• Set reasonable expectations: When you create quizzes, make sure all questions can be answered by referring the the given learning resources. When you ask students to write summary of lecture videos, you should make it clear that this is not a serious report.
• Use group communication carefully: Group communication shouldn’t be used for direct teaching. Set up your own timings for the online class room session, focus on providing social support and checking if any issues need to be addressed immediately.
• Make meetings optional and be relaxed: No need to get frustrated when no one shows up. Students will be happy to know that they have option whether to attend or not, without any kind of pressure.
• Ask them to support and consult with one another before sending emails to you directly. Some groups will click well and some will not, but this little tip and make students feel socially supported and reduce your inbox traffic.
• Plan your classes: Your students are not physically in front of you. In fact they probably will never all be online at the same tine, and they are probably in completely different time zone. Planning is essential before an online classroom environment. Virtual students are different- their needs are different from their physical counter parts. Be ready with the syllabus to teach students on that particular class and materials laid out clearly before class starts. This will give students confidence in their decision that they have not wrongly decided or let them not be skeptical about their decision to go for online classes with you.
• Every individual is different in his own way: Likewise, every student will be different and may not easily cope with online classes, being a tutor, we need to understand a student’s mind, and the way of method where the student will find it easy and comfortable in learning the same
• Online classrooms comparatively are different from the traditional way of teaching. As the student is not physically present the student may not be comfortable with the class, so being a tutor, it is upon us to win the student’s confidence and to make sure the student feels comfortable, giving them the confidence to ask questions and clear their queries.

Final thoughts

Over all, online education is a wonderful opportunity. The potential flexibility is an undeniable benefit. And as the market is growing and as the students have an exciting career development opportunity . As a tutor we need to have the potential to reach out to the students in a different way as the situation today doesn’t allow us to meet the students physically. Online teaching is not something which we can just start as and when we feel like, it needs to be planned well in advance requires lot of research, plan your methods and take the leap . Online teaching is a new way as because of the situation most of us decided to become an online tutor, With some research a preparation, you could find yourself on the forefront of the online educational movement