10 Tips For Teaching College Online

The rise of online technology, such as social media platforms, has taken over countless aspects of our civilization like wildfire. Among those is our society’s education system. With technology, student enrollment procedures improved and quicken, and education became more accessible. What followed subsequently is the rise of online college classes. Online college classes are proven to be convenient for both teachers and students. They can do their lectures within the comforts of their homes or any environment of their preference without the need to travel to campus. Online classes have particular dilemmas as well that must be dealt with to still deliver quality education. You, as an online college professor, must provide an excellent education to your online students. It’s your primary responsibility. The following tips we’ve enumerated below will help you in facilitating your online classes.

10 Tips For Teaching College Online

Plan and Schedule Your Classes

Lesson planning is an essential practice for professors like you. You should also apply such practice in conducting your online classes. Treat your online classes none differently from your regular classes conducted in an actual classroom. Plan beforehand what sort of topics you’ll discuss to your online students and what activities you’ll let them do. Aside from planning, you must also schedule your classes to manage your time well. Excellent time management skills is a trait that every college professor must possess.

Set Up an Adequate Learning Environment

Although you won’t be meeting up with your students in a classroom, you still need to set up a good learning environment in your office or whichever place you’ll do your online classes. Your students will see the aesthetic of your work environment on their computer screens. And if your work environment is conducive for learning, it’ll stimulate the learning process of their minds like in an actual classroom. You can also utilize traditional teaching materials such as whiteboards and blackboards in explaining the lessons to your students. Setting up an excellent learning environment is one way of showing your professionalism to your students.

Innovate and Stimulate Discussions

Online classes can get boring for some students, especially for those who prefer or are more engaged in a classroom setup. That could lead to your students becoming uninterested and unengaged with your lessons; thus, degrading education quality. You must avoid that outcome by innovating your teaching methods and stimulate lectures in a way that gets your students to be more involved. You can take advantage of certain trends in education technology, such as gamification. Gamification refers to the utilization of programs and applications to make learning more like a game or competition to students.

Invite Student Engagement and Feedback

Of course, you need to keep the engagement of your students for them to learn and absorb the competencies they must acquire from your classes. The most direct way to achieve that is to make your lectures creatively and innovatively interesting. Another critical aspect of conducting an online class is the quality of your teaching method. As much as possible, you need to enhance your teaching approaches by inviting your students to give you their feedback. Be open to their criticisms so that you’ll know what areas you need to improve on. In return, they’ll learn more effectively with you as their online professor.

Check with Students Often

As a professor, you should also embrace the role of being a counselor to your students, even before and after your online classes with them. You should be one of their source of guidance not just in terms of education, but also in life in general. Checking on your students often to gain information regarding their welfare is an excellent risk management practice for educational institutions.

Identify and Support Struggling Students

According to a statistic from The University of Texas at El Paso, “54 % of online students are part-time.” That implies that half of them are working or have other vital obligations aside from their online lectures. With that in mind, you can assume that some of your online students are part of that 54% and trying their best to balance their education with their other responsibilities. Some of them, for sure, are struggling to do so. So, make sure to identify them and give them support. Try to be understanding and tolerating to them if ever they underperform in your classes.

Motivate Your Students

One of your functions as a professor is to be a motivator. That’s a general fact that every educator must know. You need to keep up the morale of your students for them to excel in your classes. Make them feel comfortable during your lectures to avoid demotivating them. Show your students that you care about their education and professional future.

Share Your Resources and Strategies

If you can share your online resources and learning strategies, you should do so to your students for their complete online college experience. In doing so, you’re helping them to experience a much better learning process. Other than that, some of your online students might lack their resources for learning, and they’ll surely appreciate it if you can share yours with them. Therefore, establishing your reputation as an excellent educator.

Maintain Visibility If Possible

Hours before or after classes, your students might have some urgent concerns or questions with the lectures or activities. It’s your responsibility to respond to them as soon as you can. That said, you have to keep your online status always if possible. In other words, try to maintain visibility consistently so that you can attend to the inquiries of your online students promptly.

Use High-Quality Tools

In an online class setup, you need to utilize high-quality software and hardware tools to deliver the best possible educational experience for your students. Remember that your online students are paying expensively for their tuition, which means you’re obligated to provide them the kind of quality education that they need. You may also take advantage of automation tools to aid in student performance management and providing accurate evaluation through advanced data analytics. If feasible, you can ask the administrators of your institution to invest in high-quality online educational tools.

It’s safe to say that online classes will remain a trend for generations to come. Who knows? Soon it might even become a staple and norm in delivering education to aspiring professionals. But no matter how much the landscape of conducting classes will change, the goal remains the same, which is to pass on knowledge to younger minds for our civilization’s future. So, apply the tips you’ve learned in this blog and use them to optimize your online teaching methodologies.

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