#onlineteachingplatforms | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

grinferbv · 4 years

Text

Top Mistakes Online Instructors Make (And How To Avoid Them)

Top Mistakes Online Instructors Make (And How To Avoid Them)

What can be better for a student than after waking up in the morning to pour a nice cup of coffee, turn on a computer, and see what’s new and exciting in the world of e-learning. No more missed classes because “the alarm didn’t go off”. No need to spend money on gas while driving to the campus. No more hassle with carrying lots of heavy books to class with taking classes on online teaching platforms. No surprise, e-learning steadily gains popularity. Since the world of online education expands, it allures more recruits to online learning videos. Having the option of taking courses online is probably one of the most useful things the Internet has ever offered. How is teaching online different from face to face? No entry tests for enrollment to become a student, no eligibility requirements for entering a digital class and taking a course. You’ll always get your chance to pick through the online course just to make sure it is something you need or can handle.

But what about those instructors who create online courses? Every online course has somebody who stands behind the curtain and creates content. Online instructors are those who navigate you through the information with teaching techniques they developed for learning process improvement. However, if a student is under the impression that he is experiencing a lack of information or not learning enough, this is something that will become a problem for course creators. Let’s go over some common mistakes that online instructors make while creating and teaching online courses. Get some tips on teaching online classes and tips for online classes.

Don’t teach online without a business plan once you’ve gone free float

If you are not a part of a brick-and-mortar school or college, most likely you decided to go free float and work independently to become an online teacher. Moving online to teach is a great idea, but keep in mind all the challenges that come with teaching colleges online. How to be an online teacher? Before gaining vast benefits from your self-employment, realize that it won’t be even tied to any location whatsoever anymore. So, think about creating an essential analysis of expenses and marketing efforts you are going to invest in your new reality. Online teaching is like any business – it needs the right approach and a business plan for teaching online courses successfully. And then, after you succeed in implementing your business outlines, you’ll get a level of freedom that you only dreamt of during your summer vacation at the regular job. Online teaching is like any business – it needs the right approach and a business plan for teaching online courses successfully. Check out some online business podcasts or websites before you start teaching courses online. If you need help with creating a business plan, you can check an online course on how to write one, so it might be a great place for you to get all pros and cons first, and then start building your business plan for the year. Here are more reasons why lacking a business plan would not contribute to your online teaching business: Reveals and evaluates any weaknesses of your business;Discovers new business opportunities you haven’t thought about before started teaching online course;Strengthens your business idea through the market analysis and analysis of competitors;Develops strategies on resolutions that deal with any potential challenges teachers experience, which can derail a startup you launched;Designates your target audience and shows ways of reaching them as a creative teacher;Encourages you to go through some calculations to determine how much money you need to gain profit and provides online advice for your startup capital;Makes you look good and professional in the eyes of potential partners. Also, keep in mind marketing tools that are needed for a promotion, collecting and billing methods, website building, and SEO practices for boosting social media presence in case you want your unique online school. All of these factors and elements should be incorporated into your business plan too unless you’re willing to use online marketplaces like Grinfer.

Use best practices acquired at brick-and-mortar schools for teaching a class online

Online education demands new approaches to teaching online courses and learning techniques. Yet, omitting or forgetting the best practices you used in the classroom is a mistake. Don’t skip traditional methods like portfolios, team-based learning, small-group discussions, etc. Another thing that you should maintain as an online instructor - your positive attitude. Be friendly and care for your students. Working from home can be tricky and can set you in the mood of being isolated. Try to build positive relationships with your students and your colleagues through online forums and social media groups. Realize that trying to create a one-path-fits-all approach may not be too beneficial to your online teaching experience and the way how to teach a class. Be friendly and care for your students. Here are more tips for you in finding ways to succeed in teaching online: Convey individual goals expressed by students into your own teaching approach. This strategy is useful for those who provide 1-on-1 consultations and lessons. Trial lessons would be most handy since this will help you to understand what level students are at and get the feel for their learning pace.Make sure that your teaching speaks to modern realities. If you haven’t been changing your teaching methods and techniques since the 90s, odds are students will not come to you for learning. Stay up to date with the current world and update your syllables.Stay up to date with tech tools. Keep an eye on new technologies and developments used for online teaching. You derive information about most current events in the world of technologies by following podcasts, picking through blogs, and publications posted regarding this industry. Don’t overwhelm your students with too many tech tools though. Most people just simply don’t have enough time tinkering around all the innovations.

Don’t teach online without providing timely feedback to students

How do online college classes work? Since online students mostly learn through self-study, structuring a day, and staying on track with assignments can be challenging for some. That’s why providing timely feedback, online class tips, and evaluations is really important. That way learners will know that they are all on the same page and going in the right direction. Timely feedback shows either there was obvious progress in studies or whether a student needs to identify areas they are struggling with, so interact while teaching. It is also a good way of suggesting or recommending more useful methods and exercises used for improvements of learning. Teaching feedback can be provided in the following ways: videos, responses in written format, audio recordings, teacher comments. Written feedback is given directly in the Learning Management systems or (LMS). In some LMSs (such as Canvas) there are already built-in voice and video recorders. Here are some software used for free in case the LMS you’ve been using does not allow either video or audio feedback: Vocaroo - uses audio podcasts for providing verbal feedback. The instructor's comments regarding students’ submissions are recorded and provided with links available for playback.Jing - combines screen capturing with verbal feedback, which then delivers video responses to learners. Screen captures can also go along with verbal feedback, which later elaborates on written comments. A link with video feedback is usually delivered to learners along with their assigned grades.Zoom - can be used as a video conferencing software for hosting virtual sessions and offers vast applications for providing feedback.Knovio - a platform used for creating video presentations. On this platform, learners get a chance to view the online edition of their work being corrected while they can watch their teacher talking about it at the same time. It is a useful tool utilized in flipped classes. It can also be utilized for providing video files that contain feedback responses. How to get teaching experience and manage teaching time with the online approaches for learning? Master your organizing methods by creating a Teaching Toolbox for collecting and providing feedback to students. Teaching Toolbox is a repository of responses produced and accumulated over a certain period of teaching. The main purpose of such a toolbox is to save time while searching for a particular response, as well as for adding new content for later use. You can either create a text document with a table of content where everything will be sorted by headings, or use MS Word Quick Parts. Its function allows saving blocks of text and then later access signature blocks which can be used as shortcuts with repeated comments provided to students.

Don’t teach online with focusing too much on creating lengthy videos

Once starting to make videos for online courses, many educators get caught up in chasing after creativity and entertaining content. Your course content should not shout very loud: “Take my online class!” The final result might be very surprising – long videos with fewer ideas. That's where the idea that less is actually more becomes obvious. In most cases, creating shorter content feels like putting serious constraints on the process. How to overcome this challenge and yet create substantial videos for your great online course? Tips for online instructors for the effective video-making process: Know your target audience and examine their pain points – with a general topic in mind which you are about to cover, determine what possible gaps or downfalls in the knowledge your target audience has. Focus on these parts to make your video more instructional.Make a clear objective for the learning process – try to set a clear learning goal and stick to it while making videos.Choose the right format for videos that best suits your topic. You can choose either animation or live-action videos (or both). It depends whether you speak about abstract concepts or want to show complex actions such as doing makeup, cooking a dish, or making a craft. If you’re creating an instructional video, then try a screencast for showing how to use some software or application. Try a useful software called Asana, which is a project management program that mixes live actions with screencast videos.

While creating instructional videos with different scenario branches, it is better to write separate scripts for each scenario just for avoiding confusion.

Don’t teach online without being fun for your students

The final question is - who is an online instructor really? The answer is - a person with a positive attitude and somebody who likes to have fun. So, give some room for a good laugh with some subtle jokes. You don’t have to look serious in order to provide learners with useful information. Make your students smile and move on with your learning process with a positive attitude!

Read the full article

#becomeanonlineteacher #howisteachingonlinedifferentfromfacetoface #howtogetteachingexperience #learningonline #MistakesOnlineInstructorsMake #onlineeducation #onlineinstructor #onlineinstructorsjobs #onlinelearning #onlineteachingplatforms #teacheronline #teachingonline

1 note · View note

itsmastermindabacus · 3 years

Text

Over 30000 Abacus Trainers are now jobless, the Pandemic effect. Are you one of them?

In the ensuing write-up, which is a conversation that I had almost a year back when my entire team was all engrossed in finding a solution for the revival of all the Abacus Institutes that had been forced to close down owing to the Covid Lock down. The students stopped attending their Abacus classes. This had severely hit our own business as we were hugely dependent on our franchise business spread across 16 countries. My conversation was with three people, one being an Abacus Trainer cum owner of the Abacus Class and the other being the duo of a father and child. The child was a student of Abacus. I being an Abacus promoter was curious to know, ‘What do they have to say about the effect of the Covid pandemic on Abacus?’ Effect of the lock down on the Abacus Classes While the Institute owner expressed of he going through a very bad phase as he had to close down his centre as the students stopped coming due to the lock down. He also said he did try teaching online through the available video conferencing apps, but the results are neither satisfactory nor promising. It was not convenient for teaching. I told him, I couldn’t agree more and that over 20000 Abacus Institutes worldwide had shutters down due to the lock down, and also that this had rendered more than 30000 Abacus Trainers jobless. Effect of the lock down on Abacus Students. When I looked at the father and son duo, I felt they both had a lot to say. While the father said that his son had to discontinue the Abacus Training as the centres were closed. He felt this deprived his child of learning the skill of Abacus math. Meanwhile, the son was waiting impatiently for his turn to get into the conversation. It seems he had a lot to say, which seemed very obvious as he was the end-user, and naturally the most affected. He said when the lock down started his Abacus class got closed. He was sad that he and many other students of that Abacus class now were unable to learn Abacus Math. I told him that it was not only him but over 5 to 6 lacs or approximately half a million students were facing the same situation. They all had to discontinue their Abacus Training. Online Abacus teaching is not effective When I probed further with my question, that why did the teacher not go online and also why the student had not joined an Online Abacus class? Well with this I seemed to have hit Pandora’s box. Both the teacher and the student started to put in their opinion to this. They had so much to say. Let me sum it up one by one. I will get you the Students view first. -He said learning abacus on the mobile was very difficult as he could sometimes not see the finger movements demonstrated by his teacher and also said his teacher also faced the same problem. Because of this, he was making mistakes in moving the beads correctly on the Abacus instrument. He further added the wrong answers always frustrated him. - He was finding it difficult to do Abacus Mental Math practice because of this. He was also unable to improve his speed of calculations because of the lack of mental practice. - The student was also of the opinion that his workbook both for Homework and Class Work could not be checked regularly. - He further said he was not enjoying learning Abacus as he did not know how his other friends were performing. The child summed it all up in one final sentence that the Online Abacus class was not interesting and he did not want to continue. Now it was the turn of the teacher. He said he agreed with all that the student said. He also said that if Abacus had to be taught online then a dedicated platform has to be created both for teaching as well for the student to learn. I went a step further and asked him to be more specific about what are all the facilities that he would like to have in the Online Abacus Teaching Platform so that he could teach smoothly and effectively. I must say the teacher was very clear in his mind, he insisted I would better take note of the points that he was going to raise. To which I agreed and started to jot down his points under this head, Requirements in an Online Abacus Teaching Platform a. A well developed integrated system from where several students could participate in the Abacus Class, he could train all the students for the right finger movements and also be able to monitor and ensure that all students followed the right method. The number of students in the class should not be a hindrance in the teaching process. It should not be dependent on external video conferencing apps. b. An option that would allow problems of different students to be attended at the same time by him and still not disturb the normal classes functioning. c. A system with the facility from where he could give Classwork, Homework and also that he should be able to check and evaluate the work thus done by the students, preferably in real-time. d. Most importantly a specially developed content that could be easy to show, explain and be able to keep the students glued to the screen. He said the if the lessons are created in the form of self-explanatory videos that he as a teacher could add explain further and use as visual support to explain to the students. This he said could be the only way that would bring back the students to the Abacus classes and also will be worth the money the parents will invest. e. He also said that since it would be all online better if we are done away with the workbooks and the child should solve the questions and input the answers on the system itself. This he said would ease the problem of evaluating the work done by the students. f. One more issue he said that need to be addressed was to create a competitive atmosphere in the class was to give awards to the students. He concluded even if it is virtual, it would good enough. g. After a second thought he went on to add that if the experts could develop a digital Abacus, that can be of great help especially if the child gets stuck in solving any sum while doing the homework. h. A system that would allow the teacher to conduct the exams level wise and also allow the teacher to issue Certificates to the students after that. i. He said further that before he forgets, he would also want that the system must also have a complete teachers training system so that he can become an expert in conducting the Online Abacus Classes. i. He also wanted the system to facilitate online registration and collection of fees of the students. Well, well when he was done saying all that he had to say and I was done with my listing, I was very clear why the several companies that claimed to be offering Online Abacus Classes had failed to help the closed down Abacus Institutes to get back their students. This required the experts to develop a huge integrated Abacus Teaching and Learning system in tandem with the Abacus Experts who would have to develop an exclusive online friendly curriculum that could deliver the expected convenience and results. This was asking for a hell of a lot of investment both in terms of time, expertise and finance. Which certainly was not a cup of tea for the small-time companies. The challenges were too many. But of course, what was the solution? As promoters of Abacus Education for over two decades and having our presence in over 16 countries worldwide, we Mastermind Abacus took up the challenge and developed a Hi-tec Abacus Teaching and Learning Platform that promises to meet all the needs as expressed by my friend Abacus teacher and the Abacus student. Yes, we successfully created The World's First Live Online Abacus Teaching Platform. This Online Abacus Learning Platform of Mastermind Abacus meets all the expectations of the Abacus Institutes and the Trainers. It is also extremely easy for the students to access and operate. To make the program easy, high interest and exceptionally engaging for the students, the Abacus lesson here for all levels have been transformed into interesting and innovative video games based on Math calculations. The system allows the Abacus Trainer to conduct exams, evaluate in real-time, issue Certificates, collect fee mange marketing. It has an answer to every aspect related to Teaching Abacus or managing the Abacus institute in the most effective way. Anyone could start his / her own Abacus Training Centre / Institute with No Franchise Fee no overhead expenses and naturally no Business risk, with only a Laptop / PC with broadband internet connection. This is the answer to the present catastrophic situation being faced by my friend Abacus teacher and many more. It will certainly help the several closed down Abacus Centres and the out of job Abacus Trainers to not only get back their previously registered students but also encourage many more students to Enroll themselves. Your opinion and suggestions are most valid for further enhancing the utility of this Online Abacus Learning Platform. Do put in your comments in the comment box.

#abacus abacusfranchisee abacustrainer onlineabacustraining onlineteachingplatform

0 notes