Online teaching is considered an alternative form of education. Online education and online learning systems have become extremely popular due to their convenience and flexibility.
Online education has been existing for a long time. And the coronavirus pandemic only accelerated its development and increased the number of online teaching courses, materials, and software for online learning.
Today, more and more people are studying remotely: taking courses, mastering new programs, and even changing their profession. Technology is developing fast, so it makes no sense to ignore the opportunities for rapid development. For this reason, online education is expanding quickly.
In this article, we don’t cover every aspect of online teaching. We will talk about the pros and cons of online learning and give tips for effective online teaching to help you become a successful online teacher. Let’s go!
Advantages of Online Learning
- Flexible schedule. You can choose the best time yourself.
- You can get knowledge from experienced professionals and have a diploma from a prestigious university without leaving your home.
- Online education allows students to have a full-time jobs, and the cost of online learning is much cheaper than a classical one.
- Developing various effective online teaching strategies allows instructors to find an approach to any student.
- Online teachers can achieve high results and efficiency using convenient tools for online teaching (presentations, screen sharing, streaming, and so on).
Disadvantages of Online Learning
- Self-discipline — the ability to control yourself, and give up spontaneous desires for more crucial things
- The control of knowledge
- Lack of communication between an online teacher and a student
- A wealth of information and the inability to use it properly doesn’t help but even interfere with learning.
It’s simply impossible to list all the advantages and disadvantages of online learning because each student and online teacher allocates something for themselves in addition to some general points. We have tried to list the most basic and apparent pros and cons of online teaching and online learning. Let’s move forward!
Online Teaching Tips
Since our article is explicitly focused on effective online teaching, and the main task is to advise on how to become a successful online teacher, let’s take a closer look at this aspect of online education.
The Target Audience
You need to understand your target audience and the people you teach to become not only successful online teachers but develop an effective online teaching strategy. You must be clear about who you are working with.
If your target audience is children, they need a special approach. You probably understand that online education is much more difficult for children. So, it’s essential to interest them, bring some interactivity to the online learning process, and have advanced teaching skills. It’s crucial to find a way with each student. Moreover, keep in mind that you are teaching online, and not all feelings and emotions can be conveyed through the monitor screen.
The situation is different when working with adults. In this case, you also need to develop an effective online teaching strategy, but it’s much easier to work with this audience. However, it would help if you didn’t relax either because people are diverse and perceive information differently.
Interaction with Students
The next point on our tips for online teaching is interaction with your students. To become a successful online teacher, and make your online teaching and online learning for students as effective as possible, try to establish a relationship with the audience.
As an online teacher, you are not in the auditory. All you have is Google Classroom, a microphone, a webcam, your voice, and your knowledge. You must not only convey the material but make your online lesson interesting.
Be sure to watch your speech, gestures, facial expressions, and body language; start the lesson on a positive note; tell a joke or a story that happened to you today and relates to the topic. Try to use all possible vocal techniques (intonation, pauses, tone), and know your students by name. It will make you a successful online teacher and win them over.
A Clear Plan
The next point of our tips for effective online teaching is a clear plan for the entire course of study and a specific lesson.
Your plan should answer three basic questions:
- What will you talk about?
- In what sequence?
- What things won’t you talk about? This is necessary to meet the allotted time for the lesson.
It’s hard to structure information on the go — immediately during the presentation. Therefore, you need to sort the data out even before the start. Decide in advance when you will answer the questions: during the lesson or end. Note this in the plan.
It’s also beneficial to present your plan to the students to clearly understand how the lesson will be structured. Online teachers and students are advised to use task management tools not to forget or miss anything. Such tools increase personal productivity.
Add Visual Content
Visual content is gaining tremendous popularity today, so any successful online teacher should use it in the online learning process. We can talk endlessly about the benefits of visualization in online education. So if you are in doubt about whether it’s worth it, read about it on the net.
Visual content won’t only help convey information more clearly and demonstrate some things but allow students to repeat the material after the class.
So, for instance, you can record video lectures or create some presentations and use infographics and audio content. Most importantly, it would be best to consider that not all devices support video and audio formats. In this case, share the list of the best VOB file players with your students. They will be grateful to you.
Discipline
We mentioned this point as one of the disadvantages of online learning. And the reason for this is quite apparent. Studying at home or teaching from our living room in a comfortable environment can relax.
For online teaching and learning to be effective, you must know how to say ‘No’ to yourself and develop inner discipline. A successful online teacher shouldn’t be late for online lessons and fulfill all promises on time. The same is required from the students, which also applies to completing tasks on time. Today, numerous software for time control has been developed, but it’s still better to learn the discipline yourself.
Moreover, it would help if you organized your workspace properly. It concerns a work table where you will focus on performing the necessary tasks, where you can place a computer and all the required items. There should not be anything distracting and interfering with concentration.
Get rid of all annoying factors: TV, loud music, push notifications on your smartphone and close all unnecessary browser tabs. Find a comfortable chair, and prepare some water.
Engage Your Audience
You need to interest the audience and involve them in the online learning process to become a successful online teacher and effectively teach online. Here the first and second points mentioned above are intertwined.
As an influential online teacher, you need to convey information interestingly and engage the audience in dialogue. Not a monolog, but a dialogue! There are many articles on the web on ‘how to engage your audience and grab your listeners’ attention. Be sure to read them. You want to be not only successful but an effective online teacher, don’t you?
Feedback
To develop an effective online teaching strategy and make the online learning process even more productive, be sure to collect feedback from your students. You always need to know whether the task is clear to the students, whether full-fledged access to educational materials is provided through the file-sharing service, etc.
You can receive this feedback directly through private dialogue or via email and other means of communication. Pay special attention to this point. It will certainly help you connect with your audience and become a leader. You should analyze the received data and draw the appropriate conclusions. If necessary, change your teaching strategy. Remember, there’s always room for improvement!
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Summing Up
The effectiveness of online education has two sides and can’t be assessed unambiguously. Online learning is in the process of rapid development and has a lot of advantages! Although there are disadvantages to online learning, they can be found in traditional methods.
The crisis caused by the coronavirus has become the very driver that prompted many people to change jobs, specialties, and areas of activity. Accordingly, the demand for additional educational training programs has increased.
Those specialists who can submit the material as accessible, complete, engaging, and most often in a short time as possible turned out to be in demand. A successful online teacher must have digital competencies, be flexible, adapt the lesson to any conditions and format, and keep the audience’s attention in any situation.
The modern way of life requires specialists who are ready to learn regularly. Therefore, online education won’t lose its attractiveness, and the demand for online teachers with ready-made effective online teaching strategies will only increase!
We hope our tips for online teaching have been valuable to you and you will become a successful online teacher! Good luck!
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Since his teenage years, he's been blogging about tech support, reviewing programs that might be useful for people looking to get started with their blogs or other projects. Ben devotes most of his time to developing the Movavi media giant blog.
In addition, Ben writes on various topics, including the latest trends in the world of media, gaming, educational apps, etc., providing both safe and free programs for use by anyone who needs them. Visit Ben's blog to get acquainted.
Online learning program is very popular nowadays, it is really useful and beneficial. Personally, I support this new way of teaching.