Do you want to get attention of students while online teaching? Students today have short attention span and are always short of time. They are interested in getting summary rather than reading the entire chapter. They are more interested in things which impact their lives, rather than something totally unrelated. That is why, they want easy to understand information delivered when they need it. Needless to say, the information should be accessible in all the devices they use.
Getting exclusive attention of the students is like a dream of every tutor. It is difficult, but not impossible. Here are some of the way how you can make your online teaching more effective and learning for students more enjoyable.
- Teach in smaller quantity
Mind of an average human being is not designed to process lot of information at a time. That is why, things to teach in one class should be relatively less. Ideal size should be easily-digestible bite-size chunk. Don’t plan your classes to be for more than two hours. Attention span drastically falls after one hour and is almost zero by the end of two hours.
Make sure to upload all the files, so that students can access them before hand.
- Teach one thing at a time
Nobody can ride two boats at time. In same fashion, it is very difficult to teach, two concepts/ topics at a time. Break your class in to smaller chunks and teach only one concept at a time. Let your students understand that one concept, before moving to the next.
- Image/ diagrams work far better than texts and words
Right from early ages, humans have always understood concepts through pictorial representation, rather than through texts. Words are retained in short-term memory, in comparison visuals are processed in longer-term memory.
In myTutoring, you can share the files with your students. Or you can share your screen with students during the session. Alternatively, you always have whiteboard to explain the concepts. All these will lead to better engagement with students and enhanced learning.
- Contextual Learning is far better
We love stories. If there is a backdrop of the concept you are teaching, the learning will be far more effective and students will be more engaged.
You can do this by passing the information in a systematic way. You need to have a proper class plan. You should know what your students expect from you, what are their pain points and what they are expecting from you. Knowing these things you will be able to set context very easily. In starting of your class, you should clearly state, today’s objectives, takeaways and homework for students. At the same time, you should give them a proper action plan to help them evaluate themselves.
- Don’t loose that Personal Connection
In digital communication, relationships are more essential as it is very easy to loose track. You need to establish one-to-one connection with your students at a personal level. Ultimately, if a student is coming to learn something from you, he/ she is looking for that personal/ human touch in learning.
myTutoring online tutoring platform provides a range of online tools for the same. You can use email, whiteboard, text, audio and video chats to connect and engage with your students.
Now you must have a better idea of how to make online teaching more effective. Now you need to plan your online classes accordingly. Change or edit your course material and identify how to break it down into smaller lessons. There are many online tools to create high quality visuals. Thus you will be able to better connect with your students.
Using these techniques, you need to improvise your teaching. It will take sometime to see the results. If you stick to it, in few months, you should see the results.
Do let us know what you think of our ideas.
myTutoring’s tutoring platform is the best online teaching platform with all the required tools to get your online tutoring business started in few weeks. Contact us for a live demo session.