The COVID-19 pandemic has compelled educators to re-evaluate how they teach and connect with students. Many schools and universities have gone completely online, and freelance tutors are working hard to deliver their classes successfully. However, like students struggling to adjust to this new normal, it is not easy for teachers as well to adjust their curriculum and lesson plans to a completely online environment. Things can get more challenging if you are teaching online for the first time and are unfamiliar with the online classroom and tools.
Setting Up An Online Tutoring Business- Steps To Follow
If you are a tutor who is getting ready for part-time or full-time online teaching this year, there are several things to consider and plan for. You might also need help setting up a private tutoring business and making money.
This blog discusses some valuable tips to equip yourself to cope with online classes and build a successful online tutoring business.
Simple Design For Course Navigation
The best experience you can give your learners is to make the learning process easy and clear. To understand how your learners, feel when first visiting your online teaching platform, position yourself in their place. Think that you are a learner taking an online course for the first time. How do you feel? How to take the first class? Where to find the first test?
Imagine all the uncertainty associated with being in an online environment with no one to walk you through it. Hence, to make it easier for your learners, keep the navigation simple and obvious. If you can, create a brief video explaining how to use the tutoring platform and find the first course.
Engage Your Students In The Learning Process
Invite your learners to get involved in the process. Schedule one-to-one classes with your students to check their progress and address their concerns. Find creative ways to keep learners feeling connected to one another by engaging them online.
You can use text chats, short videos, etc., to fuel engaging conversations. Additionally, try structuring your learning opportunities to reduce frequent tutor support. This will help improve your students’ independence while giving tutors a chance to focus on other areas.
Consider Teaching Both Synchronously And Asynchronously
Synchronous teaching refers to teaching your students online by connecting with them in real-time using video conferencing tools like Zoom. Perhaps that is everything you need for the first few weeks of your online classes. However, along with taking live classes, you must consider tutoring asynchronously, which means you need to include lecture videos or online courses which they can use for self-paced learning. Both synchronous and asynchronous learning have their benefits; let’s explore both.
Synchronous Learning
- Learners and tutors can interact with each other in real-time, just like in a real classroom.
- Students feel connected with a community.
- More engagement and interaction.
- Can exchange questions and doubts in real-time.
Asynchronous Learning
- Students can progress through self-paced learning whenever they want, according to their convenience.
- Students can take their own time to reflect on the concepts they have learned.
- All students can take part in the same learning activities regardless of time zones.
- Opportunity to review lectures several times.
- Developing video lectures and online courses can be real-time-savers for tutors as they can use them repeatedly.
- Online courses created once can bring in recurring revenue for online teachers.
Suppose you want to integrate both live teaching and self-paced learning into your online teaching. In that case, you can consider using tutoring software to develop an online teaching platform to implement the same. Pinlearn is a professional self-hosted tutoring software with live classes and self-paced courses suitable for expert tutoring at levels.
Create Social Media Profiles For Your Online Class
Most students are active on social media these days. Hence, creating social media accounts is the best way to reach out to them. Create a professional handle for yourself where you can post details about classes, upcoming assignments, learning tips, mini videos, reminders, and more. Also, you can create WhatsApp groups and add your students so that you can be available whenever required to clarify doubts and post important notifications.
Find Time For Yourself
When you are just beginning with online teaching, you are still learning how to use an online teaching site, just as your learners are learning how to use it. Find time for yourself to analyze how the experience is going for both you and your learners. You do not have to be perfect, but try to get better each time.
Ask yourself the following questions:
- What can I do to make learning more accessible and meaningful to learners?
- What trends do you see in learner’s participation, and how can you improve it?
- How are your students doing when it comes to the progress of lessons?
Keep Your Learning Videos Short
If your lecture videos are generally an hour-long, try to split them up into multiple short videos-it would be great for both you and your learners. As your students consume content at different speeds over different time intervals, it is best to keep the lectures short.
If you ever want to review your videos in the future, it would be helpful as you can simply update a short video rather than re-recording an entire lecture once again. Creating longer videos is fine, but don’t expect your learners to watch them fully. You can leverage analytics to determine which parts of video lectures your students are skipping or re-watching.
Be Proactive
Being proactive is really important for an online teacher as any uncertainties can happen, disturbing the smooth functioning of your online classes. Hence you must be well prepared to embrace the unexpected. Prepare a list of things that could go wrong in an online teaching environment and be ready with a backup plan for each situation.
Conclusion
The COVID-19 pandemic has popularized online education and forced both students and teachers to embrace new technologies. Online tutoring is here to stay, and the more you get comfortable with it, the better the opportunities for success and the happier your students will be.
These pieces of advice discussed here will help you run your online classes more interactively. For long-term success, you must constantly try and experiment with new strategies that cater to all types of learners.