Online Teaching Methodology: Mistakes and Solutions

Distance learning and its relationship with emerging computer technology have made many promises in education. Modern technologies allow almost every teacher to create their courses. With the right online learning platform, you can share knowledge with students through webinars and lectures.

But, despite many effective teaching methods, it is impossible to avoid difficulties in working with the target audience. Let’s look at the main benefits of online learning, common mistakes that arise during the educational process, and how to solve them.

What are the benefits of online learning?

Most teachers consider distance education to be a more convenient and profitable option for work.

Having chosen in favor of online teaching, the organizer gets a lot of advantages:

■ the ability to teach anytime, anywhere;

■ easy tracking of the progress of each student;

■ the effectiveness of training increases through the use of presentations, tests, screen sharing, videos, etc.;

■ budget savings. No need to rent premises for organizing courses, pay for accommodation in another city, etc.

This section has collected materials that will help you decide on a distance learning system, assess the required investments for its implementation, and successfully set up a distance learning system in your organization.

The first problem is ignorance of the audience

30-40 students can enroll in your course, but these can be very different people. There may be students who did not write anything other than abstracts at the institute. There may be older people who wanted to create their article on beekeeping on the course and did not know how to work on a computer. This is a serious problem, and it may not be clear how to deal with it. Entering an admission exam or filtering by skill? Reduces conversion. Teach everyone? Half will be dissatisfied.

You can use two solution methods at once:

1. Fill out the form upon admission. This can help you filter out the wrong people and prepare yourself mentally. To understand how you can do informative surveys, you can order a trial version from the writing services professionals.

2. Divide the course into essential and professional parts. For the professional part, introduce increased admission requirements.

Students may have poor motivation

Each of the past streams of the course can be divided into two parts. For the most part, students are now motivated because they want to be taught. In the smaller part, include active students who stretch themselves.

Active students create a considerable workload for the teacher because they have to call them separately on Skype, answer questions, and check their homework more carefully. It seems that two active students are loading the teacher like five regular students.

But ordinary students with poor motivation are a problem for the course. They seem to be learning poorly. The course seems useless to them, the expectations from the training are not met. To increase the motivation of students, it is necessary to increase the activity of the course.

You need to publish notes more often and share links to a closed group on Facebook, give detailed comments on each work, start lectures with a brief analysis of homework. Also, in future courses, you can send students a weekly newsletter with the news of the current course.

It is essential to collect feedback constantly

Suppose the impressions of unmotivated students creep down. In that case, you need to immediately improve the curriculum or give them fun homework, write a story for a group, call some students and encourage them.

Technical problems

No one is immune from problems such as computer breakdown, power/communication interruptions.

If you are interested in the quality of your lessons, we recommend that you have a backup plan:

■ keep your laptop, tablet, and smartphone fully charged. 2-3 hours of operation of a standard battery may be enough for you to conduct a lesson;

■ in case of problems with communication, provide for the presence of a mobile Internet. Modern smartphones support the mode of operation as a Wi-Fi point to connect from a laptop.

Fatigue

The distance education program should be organized so that neither the students nor the teacher gets tired. Fatigue negatively affects both the assimilation of the material by the students and the ability of the lecturer to convey information correctly. How to solve the problem:

■ alternate difficult lectures and homework with simple ones;

■ make the course program more diverse;

■ connect to the work of graduate students who will help with checking homework.

What other problems could there be?

It is necessary to mention the general problems that arise in distance education. This could be either due to any means, but they are a real problem in this classroom curriculum.

■ The nature of the teaching material. This problem is common among younger students. Studying materials should consider the significant proportion of students who enroll with little or no distance learning experience. The learner’s foundation is essential when preparing teaching materials. It is challenging to prepare lessons according to individual student differences. In addition, it is worth providing similar material for rural and urban students with different needs, experiences, and learning environments. If the student is more technical, then he will not hold distance education.

■ Lack of multimedia instructions. More attention is paid to sending printed materials. But there is the death of multimedia learning tools. The variety of teaching materials also improves the quality of teaching. Lessons written for students are usually written by teachers who belong to the traditional system, and therefore these materials usually do not have a teaching methodology.

Solving these problems

1) The main thing in distance education is educational material, which is given according to the student’s academic performance. The material should be digital, which made the student learn easily.

2) Institutes with their campus are better, and the employer easily reads students from these colleges.

3) How does one teacher answer many students’ questions? The answer is that he can make a team of volunteers from his student team and help students solve their problems.

4) There are many libraries on the Internet, and books are available online for free. The student taking the course can borrow books from the Internet.

5) The instructor should make a research group on social networking sites, start the group and hold a meeting once a week/month.

5 Effective Problem-Solving Tips

1. Working with the target audience. Determine the level of knowledge of candidates through testing or surveys.

2. Divide your course into several levels, adapting them to the interests and capabilities of the audience.

3. Work with motivation. Change the activity of the course, collect feedback from students.

4. Create a closed communication group to share helpful information, news, and work on bugs with students.

5. Do not run webinars too often so that neither teachers nor students get tired.

Need a closed group for communication

Students are usually scattered throughout the course. They live in different cities and even countries. They do not know each other personally. They communicate only with the teacher at webinars and sometimes communicate with the course curator.

This reduces motivation. It seems that the student is not needed by anyone, that no one cares about him. To combat this, you can create a closed Facebook group and publish 1-2 entries per day to keep this group active. Throw off useful links, discuss work, share the news.

In short:

■ Interview your audience before class to help you adjust a little to their interests.

■ Work on motivating students and collecting feedback after class.

■ Start a closed group where you will post helpful, relevant content.

■ Invite other teachers and graduate students.

■ Don’t run multiple webinars in a row.

But for a closed group to work, you need to publish constantly. Ideally, there should be a graduate student who is responsible for its administration. He should post notes on a schedule and invite teachers to publish their posts.

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