Starting a new career in online tutoring jobs might be one thing but teaching in a regular classroom environment and shifting to teaching online is completely different. A change like that can be quite challenging.
First of all, you need to implement all of the teaching methods you know for teaching in a virtual environment, which means some of the old methods will not work anymore. For example, such as working on assignments in groups – is much more complex to do that remotely.
Also, you will have to come up with some new teaching methods for your students to help them engage more in the classes and succeed better in your taught subject. Thus in today’s post, we are sharing 5 tips for teachers shifting to tutor online jobs.
1) Help the Students Get More Involved
The biggest threat of tutoring online is that it is going to be very easy for your students to become unmotivated and lazy because of the lack of engagement. Feeling unmotivated is also influenced by the worldwide pandemic: the young mind is separated from its natural environment, friends, and entertainment, so it can be pretty saddening.
Therefore instead of blaming your online class for being unmotivated, help them become more motivated: work on more engaging studying material, add some visuals, and recommend some extra reading or even video material.
Get creative: as working on group assignments is no longer as it used to be when everybody was in the same classroom, you can come up with various games that will help lift up the mood and learn new things at the same time.
2) Start Asking for Feedback
If you want to succeed as an online teacher, asking for feedback from your students will help you both to keep updated on your progress and improve your weaker points. For example, if your online classes lack engagement or homework tasks need more clarity, your online students might point that out.
However, when you ask for feedback, make sure you give your students an option to do that anonymously because some of them may avoid giving you feedback because they might be scared of your reaction or that it will affect their grades.
More to it, if you notice that your students are not getting involved in giving you feedback about your online tutoring, either good or bad, it is possible that they just don’t know what to say, so give them some options to choose from.
3) Work on Building Relationships With Your Students
In the online world, it is easy to feel left out and disconnected from the real world and one-on-one type of communication. And this works both ways: both for the teacher and his students.
Thus in order to make the online teaching environment more friendly, welcoming, and engaging, work on building relationships with each of your students – get to know them better and help them when they struggle with certain topics.
Also, if so far you are enjoying this shift to tutoring online, you may want to teach some additional classes, which can be easily found on online tutoring platforms like Preply.com. Websites like this have multiple online teaching jobs you can apply for.
If you find a side job as an online tutor, building relationships with your students is going to matter even more because they will always have the ability to choose someone else as their online tutor.
4) Plan & Monitor the Online Learning Progress
You might be surprised but you are not the only one who needs feedback – your students need it too. And on top of all that, you need to know how well your students are doing too.
First of all, you need to plan your whole teaching process and have a proper timeline and goals that you want your online students to achieve. One of the important parts of planning your online classes is preparing all of the needed materials before the class starts: such as pictures, presentations, links, audio files, and whatnot.
When you have all of that covered, make sure you also plan how you will measure the success of your online tutoring. Let your students know what will influence their evaluations.
More it, plan how you can help the students that are a bit behind than the whole class. It could be some extra classes, extra reading material, or anything else you think can help them improve.
5) Choose the Most Suitable Tools for Communication
In order to ensure a smooth workflow, make sure that you choose the right digital tools and technical equipment that are capable of meeting the needs of both you as an online tutor and your students.
For example, depending on how many students you have and what type of communication you all prefer, you should choose a chat and video conferencing platform for the online classes.
Also, make sure that you have constant access to good internet connections, that your computer is fast enough to open the needed files on time, and that you have a noise-cancelling headset for the best experience and clarity.
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