Story:
How to Start Online Teaching։ Top 7 steps

In this article, I speak about these steps which help you to begin online teaching:

1. Explore your personal and professional skills and set goals

2. Look into your audience and select a class topic

3. Put schedule

4. Choose the right platform

5. Take away your first lesson simple

6. Communication and make the process of giving feedback easy

7. Use different methods 

Don’t think that these steps are hard. No. they are easy just you need to want to and to work. 

#1 Explore your personal and professional skills and set goals

You will be a teacher and for teaching your students you must know your knowledge. As for the course module, you should understand your personal and professional skills. And finally, you must set goals. But how to do it? 

Explore yourself. Write your skills in the paper. Then think about each skill. Note your understanding of each skill. Answer these questions:

• How can each skill impress my students?

• How can I use my skills in the process of teaching and communicating with my students?

• Which skill is most important for my profession?

• Which skill can grow during teaching?

After answering these questions, do analyze and set personal goals. But why do you need goals? Your knowledge is limited and one day it can’t satisfy you. If you want to be an online tutor, you should continually extend your mastery. But for useful work, you must set goals and follow them. 

#2 Look into your audience and select a class topic

You can’t do the same lessons for the other audiences. In this case, you will look into your audience to understand its characteristics. You must consider these factors:

• age

• interests

• employment

• mentalities

• skills

• knowledge of that profession, etc.

Think about these and note your ideas. Then put yourself into the students' shoes. Which lessons would be helpful for you from the course module? Suppose first, second, third lessons. Compose periods and lessons list. Search and find resources. Plan your lessons’ types. Create assignments. Be critical that your course plan and time will be comfortable and available to your students.

#3 Put schedule 

Your students are different and you can’t adapt to each of them. Let your students adapt to you. It is not defined that the whole schedule will be only in your comfort.  When putting schedule consider the below-mentioned points:

• What is the most comfortable time in a day for your audience?

• When can your students understand better?

• How much is the best duration?

If you think that not all students can participate in lessons and you have time for two or more groups, separate the course into two or more groups. It will be more effective both for you and your students.

#4 Choose the right platform

Now opportunities are very much available and you can teach online on many platforms. You must know what you want to teach online. If you just want to share your knowledge and money is not important for you, you can create courses on YouTube. It is a great platform and the number of your customers also is big. On YouTube, you can not see your students’ emotions and it is hard to gather an audience. 

You can also use Zoom or Skype or another video conference program. These programs permit you to see your students and their emotions, to get feedback. You can easily understand their needs and knowledge.  But it is hard to give them assignments. Concurrently you can use other platforms for assignments or FAQ. 

But if you want to get money and the teacher is your job, the ideal version is your own website. There are website builders that help you create a comfortable and useful website. This version is ideal because on your website you can have these opportunities:

• Online courses

• Live lessons

• Timetable

• Quiz

• Video calls

• Blogs, etc.

So the right platform is the one key to effective teaching.

But also, you should have a high-quality camera and microphone. Choosing the best microphone for teaching online will make your course better. 

#5 Take away your first lesson simple

Because you don’t teach face to face your first lesson will be difficult to spend. For this reason, you should take away your first lesson. You can introduce the course to your students. Then your students can introduce themselves (if the first lesson is by videoconference). Also, you can ask your students what they expect in lessons. Let your first lesson be short but more pleasant. 

#6 Communication and the process of giving feedback make easy

Both face-to-face and online teaching need simple communication. If there isn’t any communication your courses will fail. Permit your students to ask you what they think, what they don’t understand. As many questions as interesting and interactive as will be lessons. Not only students ask you, but also you ask them.  Create such a sphere that students will feel free. In this case, they can give you feedback, which is very possible. You should analyze these opinions and come to a corresponding conclusion. 

#7 Use different methods

Only one method for the whole course will be boring for both you and your students. Use different methods. You can use videos, voices, texts, quizzes, tasks. You can search and find many methods. But upfront you must consider your audience’s needs then use methods. 

Finally

If you can teach and share your knowledge, do it! You can!