How Can You Shift From Offline To Online Teaching?
The current COVID-19 pandemic has led to the closure of schools and universities worldwide forcing educators to turn to remote teaching. While almost all industries are badly affected by the pandemic, education was one of the very first industries to feel the most impact as it took time for educational institutions to adapt to this sudden change.
All thanks to the technology that helps educational institutions make the smart transition from offline teaching to online teaching to maintain continuity and stick to their regular academic calendar.
However, the transition is not that easy for independent educators or any professional teachers who are not familiar with teaching. It might take many hours of effort and a great amount of patience and identifying the best teaching strategies.
Tips To Transition From Offline To Online Teaching
As educators worldwide face the shift from offline to online tutoring, it is important to consider efficient ways to maximize value for their students.
Online tutoring might bring in new challenges if you are first time teaching online. But, with the right planning and tools, you can make the transition to online tutoring simple and effortless.
Here are some of the tips to pivot to online teaching.
Decide Your Priorities
When entering into online tutoring, it is recommended to decide your priorities initially. Take some time to plan your online classes and lessons. Set a good foundation and make sure you communicate it with your students as well.
You must also consider how you will plan the timing of your classes. Also, decide whether some part of your course would be on demand videos or live.
You can leverage live classes if there is a need to communicate with students and address any challenges your learners might face. The key to success is to decide on your priorities and plan your online tutoring in the best way.
Be Open To Learning
Even if you are a professional who is an expert on the subjects you teach, you must keep a beginner’s mindset if you are new to teaching online courses.
Keep yourself open to learning, as best teaching practices and skills development, experience, etc. comes with time.
Keep your commitment to taking online classes where you remain open to learning new skills required for the modern learners of this age.
Be Present
Attend your classes every day and constantly remain available and visible to your students by staying in touch with them.
If you require your learners to give an introduction to your classes, make sure you do it yourself. Once your classes start, reach out to your students and consistently ask how things are going. Leverage group cats to keep in touch with your learner base.
Make sure you respond to all the doubts of your students so that you remain connected with them. Actively engage with your students by asking for their feedback and making changes accordingly.
Keep Your Students Actively Engaged
Students in your online classroom must be active participants and you can help them to achieve this by disciplining them in their own research. Independent research is one important skill any learners must develop to engage themselves in the classroom.
Integrate different levels of assignments to your classes so that your students can complete each level and progress to the next keeping them actively working during the course development phases. You must also attach a grade to each stage so that they can assess the performance easily.
Offer Support To Struggling Students
Each student has different grasping power and performance levels. For example, there might be some students in your classes who often earn a lower grade than others or who fail to complete the assignment when they switch to online learning.
Hence, it is important for you to identify students who struggle when switching from offline to remote learning. Conducts frequent assessments and check-in by phone with each student who is struggling to offer the right type of support they require.
Use Technology The Right Way
Never confuse technology with teaching online. Understand the fact the technology cannot replace a professional teacher who can offer the best support to their students. The best practice is to use technology to enable effective and engaging online teaching.
While software cannot stand in for a professional tutor or a subject expert like you, it is important to use a live tutoring software to build a tutoring platform to power your online classes.
PinLearn is one such software that helps you create and launch an online tutoring platform with all the features and functionalities required to deliver online classes to your target learners effectively.
Keep It Simple
Consider your first online class as a version 1. Keep it simple, you need not aim for 100% perfection in your very first online class. Start out simple and expand your classes as you grow.
If you don’t have time to make pre-recorded videos, upload PPTs, or just post your written notes. If you don’t have time to prepare notes, consider uploading a podcast which you can record from your phone.
Manage Your Time
With the transition from offline to online tutoring, it is obvious that your students will have a lot of questions that you must address. This might require you to attend them outside of your normal class hours.
Depending on the size of your learner base, you might have to stretch out your time to cater to their requirements.
Hence if you are looking for how to teach online classes effectively, it is important to learn managing your time wisely to reach out to all students and offer the best support they need.
Use Different Teaching Techniques
To achieve the best learning outcomes, you must adapt advanced teaching methods. You can adapt the same teaching style with the help of modern technology. However, every time it may not be possible to offer live classes to your students. In that case, you can provide pre-recorded lectures so that your students can learn at their own pace.
At times when it is not technically possible to appear on the screen to deliver classes, consider using different teaching methods like pre-recorded classes, giving assignments, providing classes using podcasts, conducting interactive learning activities, etc.
Leverage Appropriate Performance Assessment Methods
Make sure you conduct appropriate performance measures to analyze the performance of your students. Conduct practice assignments that will help them to be familiar with online tests.
Change the question sequences or use different versions of the same test to deter cheating. Before conducting tests, clearly define the guidelines for online assessments.
Have Clarity
Due to the current pandemic situation, not just teachers but students are confused about things they need to do when adopting online learning. Hence, you must have clarity on how you will be delivering classes to your students.
You must have clear answers on why and how regarding the essential aspects of online learning. Gain relevant information on communication tools, educational technology, learning tools, creating courses, and assessment procedures.
You must be well versed with all the aspects so that you can demonstrate and answer the questions your students have. Even if you are not personally there to explain things, make sure you create content and voice recording on FAQs so that you can clarify the doubts of your students.
Create A Structure For Your Online Classes
When shifting from offline to online teaching, it is challenging for both teachers and students to adapt to sudden changes. As you are taking your classes in online mode, make sure you design the overall structure of your classes in a way suited for better learning outcomes.
Developing a structure for your curriculum is not just important, you must also make sure it is communicated with your learners.
Create a routine for your students so that they get to their comfort zone. Also, prepare a teaching website that contains learning resources, reading materials, assignments and tests, discussion forums, etc. This will help to avoid any confusion that might arise.
Prepare A Strategic Plan
Plan your day where you create a disciplined routine for teaching and interacting with your students on a consistent basis. Schedule a time for conducting live classes, assigning tasks with essential learning materials, and conducting interactive learning activities. Also, plan the days on which you would be interacting live with your students and inform them in advance.
Ask For Feedback From Your Students
Always encourage your learners to ask questions in the class to analyze how much they have learned. Similarly, ask for their feedback on your classes so that you can support them and offer better learning opportunities. You can create a google form to collect the feedback of your students and can improve your online classes based on that.
Organize Your Teaching Materials
As most students are not accustomed to online classes, providing lengthy lectures might create confusion. Hence, you can consider breaking your content in smaller sections so that your students can understand the concept better.
Divide each content into small tasks and deliver recorded lectures or assigning tasks for individual practice. This will help them to take enough time to go through each section and ask doubts during online discussions.
Ask For Support
When starting out, you might not be familiar with the technology and online tools required for online tutoring. If you are using an online software to power your offerings, you can consider taking technical support from the tech team to solve the technical issues in the online teaching platform.
Make sure you choose the best solution partners who have an excellent customer support team to resolve the problems as fast as possible.
Conclusion
One of the main tips for teaching online would not be too hard on yourself especially when you are starting out. Allow yourself to learn through the process and have fun while experimenting.
Do not get disappointed if you make mistakes, you will get a hang of it once you take a couple of classes. Even if online tutoring is not your first choice, adapting the techniques mentioned here can help you get the most out of your online classes.
Above all, make sure you maintain efficient communication with your students and other teachers. Adopting advanced technologies will help you deliver an actual classroom-like experience to your student in your online classroom.
Author Bio
Kathy Alameda
I’m working as leading experts on building and implementing the learning strategies. I have led learning & performance improvement projects form last few years.
Currently marketing consultant at https://www.pinlearn.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/kathy_alameda
