We are in a time of 24/7 connectivity, and the internet has changed everything, even teaching methods. In the modern age, you don’t need to be inside a classroom to learn something. You can be sitting on a chair in your room and still learn anything you want. With the help of online teaching methods, learning has become much more attractive.
But first, you have to ask what is online teaching.
Online teaching is an education that takes place over the internet. In online teaching, there are no physical class sessions, and the courses are delivered 100% online.
How does it work?
In the past, instructors had to create their own virtual classrooms, but in the modern landscape, an entire industry is in charge of doing that. Course Management System (CMS) is utilized by all colleges today and allows instructors to design and deliver their courses.
5 Online Teaching Strategies
Teaching online is not like teaching inside a classroom, and it needs different strategies to engage students. There are 5 strategies listed below that help you return students’ enrollment.
1. Cooperative Learning
Cooperative learning (sometimes called small-group learning) is a type of strategy where students work together to achieve a common goal.
Modern learning software allows participants to interact with one another. Features like commenting, discussion forums, one-on-one and group chats, file co-authoring, user groups, and surveys all increase student interactions. These all make project-based learning (PBL) a highlight of collaborative educations. This strategy makes students collaborate to find solutions to real problems.
2. Differentiation Instruction
Differentiation instructions mean teaching the same material to all students using some differentiation strategies. It also needs the teacher to deliver different difficulty levels of lessons based on students’ learning ability.
One of the reasons that differentiation is so important is that giving the same training to all students can reduce the effectiveness of the lesson. Every student has different learning ability, background, talent, and educations, so they must be taught differently.
This is not easy to do inside a classroom as it needs lots of efforts and time. It is where online teaching comes in and blows classroom teaching out of the way.
You can suggest different tracks of the same training based on the students’ learning ability. But remember that the core material must be the same, just represent it differently. If not, you will be suggesting different courses for each group instead of different tracks of the same lesson.
3. Self-Paced Learning
Self-paced learning is the strategy where you let the students control the speed of the course themselves.
A student might learn the lesson as fast as he/she can. Another student might need to go through the lesson slowly. There is no right or wrong, and none is better than the other. Also, life situations might affect a student’s studying. One might have only a few hours a week to study, while another has a few hours a day. This is why self-paced learning is the best way to adapt to both situations.
Online teaching suggests effective self-paced learning for all students. They can watch videos and take the quiz anytime they are free, and even they can watch the videos several times. So it is easy for learners to take the content at the pace that best appeals to their learning style.
4. Multiple Learning Tools
Some people learn best when they see/ hear/ read/ write or act out information. But presenting information in multiple ways helps you to bolster your students’ learning.
Hearing something once is a good start, but the mix of learning methods combined with self-paced learning is more effective for learning.
This can also be applicable in learning new skills like attending a digital marketing course, where there are so many different tools created on a daily basis for marketers. These tools are created to address different aspects of marketing, from getting data to automation, in order to help the marketer learn about his business/campaigns in-depth from various perspective and touchpoints.
5. Teacher-Student Interaction
Social connections and interactions are crucial for human beings. So these interactions have a great impact on learning. Just because you are teaching online, it doesn’t mean that there is no connection between you and the learners. But you have to choose the right instructional methods to make it happen.
By mixing and matching these strategies, you should be able to find something that suits your teaching style and enhances the way your students approach their home-based learning.