Online schooling is not a novelty to the world of education, but the ongoing situation with the pandemic outbreak has emerged almost all teachers and made them realize the potentials of this type of teaching. While some struggle at the beginning, others already know how certain tools, such as the whiteboard app, can aid them and make their online classrooms more interactive. Thus, read through the following lines and learn how to make your online classroom experience more engaged for both the teachers and the students.
Work with Your Students in Real-Time
Certain students are accustomed to attending their classes at different times since online education aims to adapt to student’s schedule. While this type of education is mostly based on previously regulated materials, such as text, particular exercises, and video materials, they do not ask for the presence of both the student and the lecturer. What makes this system faulty is that it is desynchronized, meaning that the student and the lecturer do not interact in real-time, which results in belated feedback and other unfavorable conditions. To fix this issue and make it work for the benefit of both parties, you should organize classes in real-time, where interaction will be on a higher level due to the nature of engagement.
Rise the Productivity with Discussion Boards
This particular activity is what can enable you to engage even more students than the case is with traditional schooling. Namely, a not so insignificant number of students remains silent during regular classes due to either lack of interest, type of personality, current mood, or other reasons, so they fail to be a part of the class as a whole. The implementation of discussion boards can remove the student-teacher or the student-student barrier and engage more individuals and encourage them to interact with the rest of the class. There are various tools available online, such as the whiteboard app, that are easy to use and make things easier for both the lecturers and their students.
Be Confident
Whether we talk about teachers or their students, online classrooms are a novelty to a vast number of practitioners. Namely, not everybody is fond of frequent changes, and this type of modification might result negatively to certain individuals. On the other hand, it can even make certain students stand out, which did not happen in the standard setting. What is your job as a teacher is to remain the same role model as you were before the shifting, so the students might absorb a portion of your confidence. Lecturing a class does not differentiate much from a public appearance, so you should practice yourself and prepare your routines in order to perform most optimally. Thus, use all the tools you can to enrich your arsenal of skills and engage your students as much as possible. Whether it will be a tool such as a whiteboard app that enables the students and teachers to communicate more efficiently or another tool, it depends solely on you and your teaching methods.
Establish the Rules
The atmosphere in an online classroom is utterly different from a traditional setting and your job is to make sure that things do not get out of control. That is why establishing ground rules of behavior during classes is of utter importance and you should be aware that you are the one responsible for the discipline. Do not understand this advice as a call to become stricter to your students, moreover, try to organize discipline in a transparent way. When students know what their dos and don’ts are, they tend to follow the rules and behave according to a previously established agreement. Although this should be your task before entering an online classroom, do remember that you remain in charge and that you can bend the rules if the situation dictates so.
Hopefully, the lines you have read above shall enable you to upgrade both your teaching methods and the proficiency of your students. Combine the aforementioned techniques or implement the ones you consider will change your teaching style for the better. The ultimate goal of every teacher out there should be to make their pupils better; better persons and better learners, so make sure you assert all of your options delicately before putting them into practice.