Online teaching: It came to the forefront during the pandemic, but it is still widely used and no one can deny its strong potential for the years to come. As a matter of fact, the global online education market is expected to reach $325 billion by 2025 (Statista, 2023).
This shift to online teaching and learning offers great flexibility to both learners and teachers. Although it is very likely that, by now, you have found your way to work through it, consider the suggestions below as a confirmation checklist or some extra tips to add to your list.
10 tips to facilitate your online lessons
- Set up your goals; outline how the structure of the lesson (talk about lectures, exams, assignments, team projects and grading) and be clear about expectations for students’ participation.
- Break learning into smaller chunks and create clear engaging learning objectives. Having in mind your students’ strengths and weaknesses, dedicate some time for questions and short breaks to ensure that they digest the information given and are ready to move forward.
- Provide frequent feedback through online knowledge checks or comments on collaborative documents to keep students motivated. Express DigiBooks, our new LMS platform, makes this process easier, as students have real-time feedback on the exercises.
The DigiBooks app gives students the chance to work independently and evolve into empowered learners! - Include virtual meetings, live chats or video tutorials to maintain a human connection. Physical contact makes it easier to establish a connection, which means that, when online, you should try harder to achieve it.
- Ask students for feedback. This holds true for physical lessons as well, but since in online teaching in most cases, you cannot see the body language of the students, you should regularly ask for their help and opinion on the lesson structure. Don’t forget teaching’s reciprocal nature!
- Choose the right tools and limit the number of platforms and apps to avoid confusion. Express DigiBooks can be the perfect all-in-one solution that will facilitate you and your students.
- Give students offline projects and creative ideas, so as not to be in front of the screen all the time. Add an element of fun by browsing our free festivities resources for primary and secondary levels! You can also ask students to read extra books and create reading competitions! Reading is not only online, but by using real books too. Our readers can help you with that.
- As communication and human interaction are limited, focus on establishing connections. Try setting up online office hours; dedicate some time for your students to reach out to you for questions or simply discuss issues that concern them.
- Promote group work. Students’ bonding is important for the students as individuals and for the class as a whole. Invest time to introduce the classroom to each other, assign group activities and play group games online.
- Motivation is key! Find here 6 tips on how to keep your students motivated.
P.S. Most of the classroom do’s and don’ts apply to online teaching environments as well. Give them a look!
