Adopting Proper Remote Teaching Habits

August 18, 2021

As teachers and facilitators, you play a vital role in shaping the foundations of your learners providing them with the proper tools to build a sustainable future. That in itself is a lot of weight to bear. With strict COVID-19 regulations, especially in the education sector instated to keep learners and teachers safe, restrictions make it even harder to provide your learners with the proper attention and guidance needed to develop these strong foundations and provide them with the necessary tools.

Facilitators in the business training industry are facing similar challenges with restrictions on how many people may attend a session, travel bans and more.

Adopting new teaching habits in a completely new teaching environment is not an easy feat. It is hard to tell what methods work best, if at all. With this article, we hope to shine a light on some of the struggles that come with eLearning from an educator’s perspective and hopefully provide you, as teacher and facilitator, with some clarity and effective teaching habits.

Time management

The main hurdle that both student and teacher will struggle with is time management. Teaching and learning from home could be especially hard when students associate their homes as an environment where they are most relaxed and spend their time carelessly. It is important to teach your students the importance of time management to ensure that they do not fall behind from the rest of the class.

Time estimates

Give students time estimates that you suggest would be appropriate to spend on certain aspects of a task. This will help them to prioritise the most time-consuming sections first. A decent learning management system will have the option of attaching such time estimates to tasks and projects.

Follow-up

Follow up with your students on a regular basis to ensure that they stick to time constraints. Be consistent. This can be done through regular chat sessions as well as individual Zoom meetings.

Offer additional support

If it is clear that some students are struggling to work within the time frame, offer additional after class assistance and support to guide them in the right direction.

Remember that students might feel isolated during this time and any extra attention given to those who need it will keep a high moral that will further motivate students to allocate more of their time to projects and school work.

It is important to keep in mind though, that students will need to learn how to be responsible and properly manage their time. If they get used to you constantly policing them, they will not develop any responsibility towards their education. It is important to distinguish which students truly need additional support and those that are just lazy and constantly want to be spoon-fed and have you make decisions for them. They need to develop these skills to be successful when embarking on their life after graduation.

In a professional environment, employees will need to strike a balance between getting their daily duties and tasks completed while still making time to attend training. This can be hard, as they also have family lives and figuring out how to divide one’s time among all these things depends on each individual. Thus, be understanding to employees too and give them the space to adapt to the new way of approaching training.

Keep them engaged

Learning remotely from home opens the door to many distractions. Keeping students interested and engaged when presenting a class is crucial to ensure that they understand and keep up with the pace.

We can do this by finding ways to carry out traditional classroom activities through online methods. Consider live streaming your classes online and convince your students to also turn on their camera so that you can see them, if they have the option to do so, to keep teacher and student engagement. This will also familiarise them with the learning environment that they are used to in a traditional in-class setting even though they are at home.

It is important to not only rely on the usual pen and paper way of teaching and just your voice when presenting a class. It is much easier and efficient to keep students’ attention through visual stimulation. Advancements in modern-day technology have made it easy to convert traditional pen and paper content into visual content with the right tools. <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20001014041642/http://www.3m.com:80/meetingnetwork/files/meetingguide_pres.pdf">Studies have shown</a> that visual aids improve learning by 400% as our brains process visuals 60 000 times faster than text and the average person only remembers about a fifth of what they hear. Visual aids not only keeps students engaged, but it also helps to simplify hard to understand topics and ideas through visual stimulation. We can achieve this through the use of images, sound, video and animations.

Get Student Feedback

Finding success in your online teaching and training methods will not happen overnight. It is a process of trial and error to find what works and what doesn’t. A <a href="https://olj.onlinelearningconsortium.org/index.php/olj/article/view/2077">2019 study</a> has found that successful online instructors frequently asked for students’ feedback on teaching methods that work best for them. One of the key aspects of presenting a class efficiently is the way in which the facilitator has gathered data on the course and their methods of teaching identified by their students.

It is important to constantly gather feedback from your students as in doing so they will feel as though their opinion matters, and it does! Learning from a distance can make students feel disassociated from their classes as it may dehumanise the teaching environment for some students and workers, making them feel unimportant. When you ensure them that their opinions matter and that you do take them into consideration your students will better connect with you as their instructor which will, in turn, ensure that they stay engaged.

Using online tools, like Google Forms, you can set up surveys and polls to get student feedback and gather data on certain aspects of their education. They may even do so anonymously if they feel pressured to voice their opinion to you personally.

Proper Reporting and Data Mining

The best way to be sure if your teaching methods are effective is to make use of reliable reporting to gather statistics on your course and your students' progress. One of the big advantages of conducting classes online is that you have access to proper reporting tools to gather information on your courses. You can query each individual student’s progress and results. This makes it easier to pinpoint the areas in which they struggle most.

With proper reporting, we can turn raw data into useful information. Make the best of this information by looking for patterns in large batches of data to learn more about your students to develop more effective teaching strategies and increase the effectiveness of your course. Reshape your classes and spend more time on the areas in which your learners struggle. This will ensure that they get the most out of their course.

Choosing the right platform

Learning Management Systems are online platforms developed specifically to be used as an online teaching environment. Though it may seem that online classes are a reasonably new technology, in truth, they have been in use for years though not very popular as most people are scared of change. In fact, since the turn of the century, the eLearning industry<a href="https://elearningindustry.com/top-elearning-statistics-2019"> has grown by 900%</a>.

Advancements in technology have allowed LMS platforms to evolve using state-of-the-art features and tools to increase the effectiveness of online schooling.

SOCO_ED is an LMS platform locally developed in South Africa with that goal in mind. We make use of up-to-date technology whilst also keeping things simple. We offer all the right easy-to-use, yet powerful, technology to meet all your needs. With facilitator dashboards to keep track of your course including proper reporting tools and student profiles to self analyse and keep track of their own progress. SOCO_ED is accessible on any device from computers, tablets and smartphones as long as you have a proper internet connection. We also provide you with the tools to assist with creating engaging content. We are more than just another LMS platform, we aim to be your partner in distance learning. For more information on what we have to offer, contact us on +27 (0) 21 879 2788 or email us at <a href="mailto:info@socoed.com">info@socoed.com</a>. You can also visit our website at <a href="https://www.socoed.com/">https://www.socoed.com/</a>.

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Adopting Proper Remote Teaching Habits

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