Teaching Online for Beginners

During the pandemic most teachers needed to teach online if they wanted to keep their jobs. This was a rough transition for many of my colleagues (= people we work with). Thankfully, I had already been teaching online before the pandemic hit, but teaching only online was new for me.

Tips I would give to teachers starting online courses would be:

1. Take advantage of the medium to share more visuals than you would in a 'normal' classroom. For example, the illustration of the classroom in this post is marked with numbers for questions and answers. The instructor can ask their students, 'what is number number 12?' or 'where is number 1?' In a physical classroom this is not always as easy, because students do not always fully understand teachers' questions or are distracted.

2. Use the technology provided (Skype, Zoom, Teams, etc.) to optimize (= get the best out of) your lessons. For instance, many of these virtual classroom alternatives have break out rooms where small groups of students can discuss things outside of the larger class.

3. Don't be afraid to try new online games and activities. Teaching online should not be the same as teaching in person with everyone only sitting in front of their computers. It should be an opportunity to experiment with new forms of teaching.

One of my recent favorites is 'Gartic Phone'. It's an old-fashioned 'operator' game in which one student 'tells' (or usually whispers) the next student a sentence and the student who hears it must 'tell' the next student the same sentence. Usually at the end of the game the first sentence is completely different to the final version. Gartic Phone allows students to draw what they read and to interpret drawings. It's a lot of fun and adds some creative elements into a typical language activity.

It's not easy teaching online thanks to technological problems, which come up even if you are well practiced, the lack of personal interaction in a natural setting, and the amount of preparation needed, but it can open up new teaching and learning successes, too.

If you'd like to see how I teach online, book a lesson with me today!

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