Getting Started with Teaching Online

Question

Hello everyone,I'm currently in the process of writing a guide on how to teach online and would love to get feedback from teachers here.I have a couple of questions:*Have you ever considered teaching online?**If so, what would you need to know to be able to get started?*Thanks in advance for any responses. You can reply here, or get in contact with me through my blog (on my profile page).Jack.

Anonymous · Accepted Answer

Yes, I have considered teaching online. I need to know how to manage the plataform very well.

Anonymous · Answer

I currently teach online and have done so for the past three years.  I teach through an online virtual school.

Iamnoypi · Answer

I wonder if you've got a free online class. I'd love to be one of your students.

Anonymous · Answer

I need to koe how to charge and collect.
Getting paid is always the though part of any business.

Anonymous · Answer

i can not understand the part of jumbled sentence according to the text. can you show an example?

Mauro Dalle Prane · Answer

Hello!
I have some experience with online teaching and these are my thoughts about it:

Teaching on-line certainly has its advantages, like a certain flexibility with time and a bigger pool of potential students available. Moreover, being something that you can do from home, it will be possible for you to do it in your free time, or anyway in addition to another job. The internet will give you access to a lot of material that you will be able to integrate in your lessons, thus making learning even more fun and interesting.
If you like the challenge, on-line teaching will also offer you the opportunity to face students living in countries that you wouldn't normally have the chance to get to know, so you'll need to research and face a lot of new inter cultural exchange.

There are, though, some important challenges that need to be taken into account while teaching on-line:
- First of all the technology: a reliable connection and/or telephone line are a must if you want to start. Checking different options for internet providers and calling plans needs to be done beforehand, to avoid setting up activities that will meet huge technical difficulties or costs at their very start (with a bad impact on the teaching quality, and on the business of course)

- The student will need to be placed at the centre of the learning experience even more than in F2F teaching, with the teacher trying their best to engage the student and make sure that it is the student who is the most active part of the lesson. This can be done by applying with even more consistency TTT reducing techniques (especially elicitation and active involvement on the part of the student in the management of activities)

- Giving lessons a personal touch can also be challenging at first, as you are not sharing with your student the teaching space: small talk at the beginning of the lesson, feedback at the end and a deep knowledge of your student's needs and interests are even more crucial in this environment, as they will allow you to adapt your teaching style and the lesson material. A constant strive for personalisation will be needed and will mostly go unnoticed by the student, but will help with developing a teaching environment that is both proficient and pleasant

- Group classes will need to be planned more in detail in order to allow every student's even participation, and using the students' names will also be crucial in order to keep everybody active. Encouraging students interaction will be as usual very important, and each student's strengths will need to be accurately considered in order to avoid somebody being left behind (easier a thing to happen, as you don't have a visual overview of your group of students)

- Another aspect that can be different is the concept checking: as body language (if at all present) will not be as reliable as it is in a F2F classroom, concept checking will need to be done in a verbal and explicit way. Concept Checking Questions will need to be phrased so that they force the student to actively use the language, leaving no doubt on the student's comprehension

- An aspect that is often overlooked when considering on-line and telephone teaching are the language grading, the speed of the interaction and the projection of the teacher's voice. Interrupting the student or finishing their sentences will be perceived as even worse a behaviour than in F2F lessons (as it's impossible to hear two people talking at the same time on skype or on the phone) and a voice projection that sounds natural in a F2F conversation, might sound flat and boring on the phone.

All in all, on-line teaching can give a lot of advantages in terms of personal and professional development, but somehow different pedagogical aspects need to be taken into account more.

I know this answer comes a bit late, but I hope this can help, also considering that on-line teaching and training is becoming more and more common.

Getting Started with Teaching Online

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