Tips for Online Teaching

Tips for Online Teaching

One of the most undervalued skills is teaching. It is often underestimated the amount of time and effort teachers apply to their material, students, and skills. As our world transitioned to online over the years, several instructors have found themselves leading courses online and facing new challenges that come with an online setting for teaching. While students may not be face to face, there are ways to keep them engaged and interested in the material. We can utilize several additional resources as well in our material versus relying on the same old tricks used for traditional in-person teaching models. To help instructors with these challenges, we have curated a list of tips to help with online teaching.

Give hands-on ideas for students to try at home

Use common household items that they can use to grasp a concept

Think outside of the box! What is something they can try at home to learn more about what you are teaching?

Give opportunities for input and interaction

If possible, make it where students can ask questions in a chat where everyone can see the answer to the question or give the option to chat privately in the event they may not want to ask publicly

Include teacher <-> student and student <-> student

Opening the door for relationship building will give your course an extra touch some courses miss out on

Group posts with a requirement of responding to 1-2 other students with meaningful feedback is a great place to start but keep an eye out for students not providing real effort on this and address it early on

Get creative

Try various mediums for sharing knowledge such as music, videos, digital art, etc.

Don’t be guilty of “death by PowerPoint”

It is real and it is not fun. This is a quick way to put students to sleep or lose their interest. Let them read the slides themselves if they are truly helpful.

Make it fun

Don’t just read the information out of a book, webpage, or slide (circles back to 3b)

Add vocal variance to keep students engaged and interested

Be available

When you are teaching online, the ability to walk up and address questions immediately is gone, so responding to messages, emails, and calls promptly is important!

 

Depending on your audience or students, these rules can be built upon. For example, if you are teaching young kids, you can include fun props such as puppets to tell a story or use hands-on crafts that their caretakers can get involved in. If you are teaching an older audience, factor in their technical knowledge and make things easy to access and research on their own if the links break. There are tons of ways to keep it fun and get creative. Use the tips above and make them your own. Include your own personal touches that students love. We hope these tips transform your online teaching from blah to whoa!

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