You have probably heard that online education has taken the world by storm. The “take it anywhere” and adjunct-friendly nature of online teaching means flexibility with where you can teach and get started even if you’re not sure you want to be a professor full time or if you’re still working toward earning your doctorate
Who Can Be An Online Trainer:
Basically anyone with a graduate or postgraduate degree can opt for online teaching. Stay-at-home parents, people who work part–time and anyone who has difficulty commuting or those who simply like to work in their own space can be an online trainer.
It is also necessary that you need to be fluent in English, as nearly all online courses require trainers to communicate in English. Students always want their teachers to be friendly and jovial. It makes them a lot more approachable and the students can learn effectively. Therefore a jovial personality, who likes to interact with students from various backgrounds is the ideal one.
How to Give Your Best to Online Education:
- Create Engaging Classes
The earliest forms of online learning were fairly “static”; much of the course content was in writing, and even the few videos or other interactive content were all designed for individual use. Now, an engaging online program can and should have live classes that facilitate real-time discussions on a high-quality, easy-to-use platform.
2. Identify the most common technical issues.
Don’t be shy when working with your course creators: Find out the most common issues, technical or otherwise, and they can put together a list of fixes you can draw from to help students experiencing problems. You should also have tech backup to whom you can refer students—make sure you get that phone number or email address too and save yourself a struggle with tech issues that maybe someone else’s responsibility.
3. Discover platform hacks to make learning and discussion more efficient.
Ask your course creators if the system has special tools and functions. Is there a way to simultaneously poll all of the students to gauge their understanding of a topic? Can students type thoughts or questions into a chat or discussion while another student is speaking and save time on the additional verbal back and forth? You don’t want to discover special capabilities halfway through a course!
4. Find Interactive Course Content
If you’ve ever sat through hours of lectures with only a few page-turns in your textbook to entertain yourself, you’ll appreciate one advantage online learning has over brick-and-mortar classrooms: interactivity.
How to Prepare Yourself:
Remember, you won’t need to pass out papers or limit reading assignments to what’s in textbooks. In an online environment, you can link students to online journals, YouTube tutorials, TED Talks, blogs — whatever you find interesting and helpful. Here are something you can do to make your teaching better:
- Get answers from experienced online teachers.
Chances are someone’s taught this class before you, and you may be able to use their existing asynchronous content. How will you design your live sessions to coordinate? Will you use new resources or assign different homework? Make sure you’re aware of what you’ve already got to work with before wasting effort.
2. Vary assignments for all learning styles.
Keep in mind that some demonstrations involving a whole classroom of people cannot be done when students are all in different places, but you do have the opportunity to include videos and tutorials that may not have been used in the classroom.
3. Communication While Teaching Online
It’s important to establish a schedule for the course and have clear expectations, especially in an online classroom where things may feel less formal so that students have an understanding of their responsibilities. It’s a good idea to keep your course in line with your program’s best practices so that you can shape your online teaching according to what has been proven to work.
4. Give Regular Feedback
There are fewer opportunities to give feedback in an online classroom, so it’s a good idea to provide feedback quickly when you can External link. It’s also a good idea to ask for feedback on how students are doing and what they need more of and pass that information onto course creators so that necessary changes can be made. It can be hard to anticipate just what the student experience will be like for online learners, so asking for input can go a long way in shaping great experiences for future students.
5. Don’t be intimidated by the process.
It can take a while to learn the steps, but eventually teaching an online class will become automatic, and you’ll be able to pull from your skillset again and again with every new class you teach.
6. Seek support.
Many programs offer support for your first class, such as a tech person sitting in on your live session in case you need help. Simply knowing there’s aid if you need it can help you relax and enjoy your first class a little more, so find out if that’s an option.
7. Embrace flexibility.
Live sessions mean the ability to teach from wherever you are while still experiencing the student-teacher interaction of a classroom. Learning new technology can be stressful, but focusing on the rewards can make it a little easier.
In A Nutshell:
Becoming an online teacher is a fairly simple way to utilise your time. You do not need much preparation and there is not a huge list of criteria that you must meet. On top of everything, you get to choose your own time to teach, so that you can have the time to manage your family, education or another job, even!
