Teaching online at home or from home is the demand of the time. Teaching online is now more trending than ever worldwide.
For the last 12 months, according to google trends search results, it’s rising in semi-developed and under-developing countries, and thousands of people searching to get information and ideas to start teaching online at home.
There are various reasons behind the growing trend of online teaching and learning or the reasons why teach online at home:
- Obviously, the biggest and most recent reason is the covid-19 pandemic. Due to that many private and government teachers have to start teaching online from home. Due to schools and colleges being closed.
- Another trending reason is the use of technology and the worldwide growing use of the internet. Students or teenagers and even small kids are becoming used to it. Students are spending less time on books and journals but more time on learning the same or similar stuff online more easily. But it’s not sure they are learning what they need to learn.
- Lack of reach and lack of money to invest in college degree courses is not possible for many students and their parents. Even many are unable to find courses and learning programs per their interest. But the internet is such as boon for them to find the right teacher, courses, and knowledge online. So, this is the opportunity for teachers to teach online at a low cost. Learn more: Importance of Internet in education at schools
- There are thousands of teachers after degrees who are unemployed. And many are not satisfied with their teaching jobs. Many are not happy with the salary and long theoretical syllabus. They know what students need. But with a job they are not able to do it. That’s why many teachers are looking to teach online. Learn more: How teachers can make a big difference in the world
- Tech companies such as Microsoft, Google, and many other college or universities are now promoting and providing online degree courses for students. For this work, they also need teachers who can teach online. So, there are requirements for teaching jobs.
- And as you know online courses are already in trend for the last 5 to 7 years. Anyone can create online courses as per their expertise and skillset and then sell that online through online course portals such as udemy.
- With the availability of teaching tools, teaching resources, content creation, video consumption, online educational platforms, and various monetization or earning opportunities teaching online is now much easier and trending.
- Also, the consumption of time and resources in classroom teaching is higher than in online teaching. That’s why online teaching is an attractive and adaptive educational business model.
- But teaching online is different than classroom teaching. Classroom teaching is much more focused and effective for undergraduate students than online. While it also depends on the interest and passion of the students for the subject and activities.
So that’s why teaching online is important, trending, and a need of the time.
Those who want to learn will learn in any way. And those who are not interested in learning will not learn. That’s that simple to understand.
But real teaching and the test of the teacher are when you make students interested to learn.
Following are the posts to learn more about it:
Online Classes vs Traditional Classes Essay
Benefits of online learning for students: Online Education
But how you can start teaching online? What teaching tools and technologies you can use? And how you will earn money from teaching online. So, in this post, I am sharing my creativity, ideas, and whatever I know so far about teaching online. I hope you will like it.
Top 5 ways to start teaching online at home
1.) Finalize the purpose and plan accordingly:
i) Find the problem and try to solve that:
There are various types of subjective, environmental, mental, physical, and technical problems students are facing worldwide. Research the problem that you want to solve. You can use Google Trends, Google keyword planner, news reports, and social media to research and plan your ideas effectively. For example, you want to solve students’ English sentence writing problems. You might want to help them to learn physics. You might want to solve the unemployment problem related to your subject, you want to motivate or inspire them, you might want to solve career confusion, etc.
You can select any of the problems or you can start with your basic vision for students’ development. And later you can elaborate more.
(ii) Select your best subject and strengths:
You’re not alone that is trying to solve the same problem or trying to educate students online. Everyone is playing with their strengths. So, you have to select your best subject. The selection of the best subject is also based on the type of solution or problem that you want to solve. It’s important to start with your strengths, is because when you face difficulties and challenges then you will be able to defeat those with your expertise, experience, and strengths.
(iii) Create your syllabus:
It’s not important that you can follow the same syllabus or sequence to teach online. Online teaching is different. Students have a variety of options to find and learn about the same things in different ways. And they want it quick and easy.
So, create a syllabus in a sequence or step-by-step process so that not it’s useful, and easy to deliver but also easy to learn and use for the students.
Here is an example of a basic computer course syllabus that I have created for the students: Best Basic Computer Course Syllabus: Improve your computer skills
(iv)Understand and accept the competition and challenges:
Teaching online is not that easy. But it becomes more difficult when you will face challenges and competition from other teachers, teaching platforms, and media companies.
You will face competition from social media companies, news websites, and channels, and other online course creators or promoters. Media companies are investing heavily in content creation and distribution.
Actually, they are trying to survive this technology and pandemic changes. So that’s why they are trying to write, record and publish everything that they can think or people can use.
For example, an economic news website or business news website are teaching how to do makeup, how to select the best dress for a party, how to build a career, and how to do anything in life.
The content is blindly consumed by students and people. It impacts their career. The content is not edited and is not original.
Even many people are trying to copy the articles, and video content to create another source or duplicate.
So in that case, it’s a competition and challenge for you to defeat all those and connect with students and teach them real things that they will need in their life, career, and business.
(v) Take the help of technology, tools, professionals, and platforms:
Teaching online is not possible without the use of technology and web applications. When you start, you don’t need to invest heavily in the technology and team. Even you can start with social media and your personal profile. It’s not important to create an online course in the 1st week. Not it’s important to buy any online teaching subscription immediately.
You can begin with testing or experiments with your educational content with your local students, local network, and personal Facebook or Twitter, or Pinterest profile.
Education or teaching or learning does not need a particular place for delivery and observations. It’s not important that those who are attending schools, colleges or degree programs are more educated than others.
If there are all educated then why today the world is facing thousands of health, economic and living standard problems?
Having intelligence is not used, without execution. So whatever the point is simple.
Start teaching online with the simplest, easiest method and even create a small Facebook group. But start.
And also learn about various other online teaching technologies and tools.
And when you are stuck on something then try to take the help of IT professionals, freelancers or area experts.
For example, if you now want to have a blog website to share notes with students worldwide, but you don’t know how to create that, then you can take the help of WordPress and a blogging expert.
2.) Select the methods of teaching and monetization or earning:
You can use all of the below teaching methods one by one or only one from all to teach online. It totally depends on you, your monetization methods, the subject content, and your creativity. And also, students understanding or observation power.
But let me introduce how you can use these methods:
(i) Teaching through images and diagrams:
Images and diagrams are best for teaching students on social media and mobile phones. But if you want to create digital images or diagrams through a computer or web application, then you need knowledge of a few graphic design tools and techniques. After that, you can create notes-based images, and diagrams and add your own branding on them, and then share them with students.
You can also sell them to other online education, websites, and even students for assignment work and test preparation.
If you want to monetize you can add them to your own website as a gallery, in the blog post, YouTube channel, Instagram, and Pinterest board.
(ii) Teaching through video tutorials:
You can take the advantage of online video search engines and portals such as YouTube and Vimeo to connect with students and teach them online. It means you can start running a YouTube channel and then monetize that with Google AdSense. There are thousands of educational channels but if you provide a unique experience, easily digestible educational content with attractive thumbnails, titles, and most importantly useful and demanding topics then it’s a great platform to teach online.
You can also distribute and create educational videos and upload them to Vimeo and then use the Vimeo OTT feature to monetize them.
(iii)Teaching through online courses:
There are already established brands and platforms for educators, and teachers to teach students online through step by online courses. You will get paid for each time when students will enroll in your course.
You can also use your own website to sell and promote your online course. You can use Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, blog, and forums to promote and educate students about your course and solutions. The best marketing strategy you can use is that provide or upload 20% of course content freely for the students. And after that encourage and educate students in those demos to join your full course.
You can also do guest blogging or publish guest blogs related to your online course on the website where the majority of the blog audience is students.
(iv)Teaching through notes and blog articles:
Even if you don’t like and are not able to start teaching students online through videos then you can also use blogs or blog posts to educate students. In that way, you can publish notes, you can write about the subject and answer commonly asked questions of the students.
It’s also helpful for the students to make notes and understand the concept in detail. And once your blog posts start getting students then you can also start utilizing other teaching platforms or live classes through your own blog website.
(v)Setup live streaming classroom:
Live streaming setup is best for online educators and teachers to teach students online. You can take the advantage of live-streaming classroom platforms such as dacast, hippo videos, etc. You can also use live video chat applications to connect with students such as skype, zoom, WhatsApp, and Facebook live.
This is also best for those running the coaching center and computer center. You can promote live streaming on social media. And you can also get paid or take fees in advance through online payment platforms such as PayPal, Payoneer etc.
3.) Understand the student’s feedback, and data and make further decisions:
The most difficult thing in online education or online teaching is that you will not get the exact understanding and learning motivation of the students. I mean it’s tough to observe the students and tough to elaborate on topics for each student.
So it’s important to include small but effective exercises, quizzes, questions and puzzles and assignment works for students while teaching online. And most importantly try to connect your subject topics to the latest happenings in the world. So that students will connect to the topic immediately.
When you do it, you will get feedback, ratings, and questions or answers from the students. You will need to read and understand students’ comments and observations. So that you can refine or redefine the topic for the next class.
While many platforms provide data analytics tools and data analysis of your course and students’ behavior. If you teach online through YouTube then will get data about viewers and details of their likes, locations, gender, source of visit and many others.
Similarly, if you promote an online course through your own blog website, or teaching through the article, or share notes in blog posts then you will get students’ responses and behaviors data in Google Analytics. For this, you have to insert a Google Analytics tracking code in your website footer.
If you do it, then you will be able to find out organic keywords, and students’ interests and you can prepare next class topics more effectively.
4.)Improve your technical skills:
Having expertise in one subject is great. But teaching is another skill. Not all experts are good teachers. And not all teachers are experts. But teaching online is not just possible because you’re a subject expert and you have great teaching skills and experiences.
It’s very important for you to learn to improve your technical skills to achieve your online teaching goals and vision.
If you learn and improve your basic computer and internet skills then it will be much easier for you to teach online.
For example, it’s important for you to know how to use a blog, how to use social media pages and groups, how to upload and manage youtube channels, how to create online courses etc.
Even you can also take the help of someone good in these things and you can also hire a freelance professional to set up an online teaching environment for you. And you can also take the help of a consultant.
If you take the help of a professional to set up an online teaching environment then you will be able to do it fast. For that, you have to pay for the tech work.
But if you learn it on your own at a good pace, then teaching online will become easier for you.
5.) Improve your teaching and communication skills:
No matter how good you are at teaching students one on one in the classroom. Still, for online teaching, you need to improve your communication skills.
The speed of teaching online is different than the speed of teaching in the classroom. Students or your listening skills depend on the listening devices and mic.
How fast or slow you speak matters the most. And most important the internet connection speed and internet data pack has also impacted teaching online.
So understand these aspects it’s important to learn online teaching skills or at least learn a few articles or watch free videos. Even you can also do a fully online course on your own to learn online teaching.
So, friends, I hope the information and tips shared in this post will be helpful and useful for you. If you need more details and a guide on online teaching please let me know through social media or comments or through messages.