Online education has become a convenient alternative from normal classes. It’s become increasingly popular and it’s a good way to create an income source.
Online education is increasing, and many people are taking this alternative to pursuing learning. Remote teaching of courses is still a novel concept, and many are even taking the time to learn how to make online teaching works successfully.
The past seven years have been part of the significant growth of redirecting face-to-face education into online education due to general flexibility and convenient accessibility. The change of course to online education opens new opportunities for salaries or income and career advancement, particularly for teachers.
Honestly, there is a big adjustment on shifting from books based teaching into online-based teaching. Once you‘ve got a grasp of using the technology and the convenience of online research, you will definitely love the idea of online education.
Read on to enable you to understand how to prepare for teaching online courses.
Table of Contents
Preparing To Teach Online Courses
Create a Definite Plan and Training Goals for Your Classes
Creating a definite plan for your class is essential to an online classroom environment. You have to consider that your classroom-based students may be different from your online-based students.
It would be best to prepare all of the things you need before the online class starts. Make sure that your presentation and materials are laid out clearly to your students. This way will help students know what they need to comply with for the online course.
Three Items Needed For This Step:
- Learning objectives will help you clearly define what your students will achieve by the end of the online course.
- The business goal is representing the financial and other growth setting to bring into your business through the online course.
- Teaching Goal is defining the goals behind your online course.
Outline your online classes
Creating an online course outline refers to dividing the whole course into various folders and subfolders for your students’ easy learning. It is crucial to keep in mind the learning objective while planning out the entire module.
It would be best to plan out a content presentation that would be more engaging to your participants. The creation of audiovisual content presentations of the modules has apparently proven to have a higher engagement rate among the course participants.
After the planning, ensure that you have established a timeline on how this will be taught to your students. It is imperative to have proper documentation about this.
A Market For Your Online Course
Check and see if there is a market for your online course. You can create a great online course, but if people aren’t interested in it. You will have a hard time making it profitable.
Check Facebook groups and see other competitors. If there are other people selling a similar online course, you know there is a market for your content.
Read: Facebook Advertising For Small Businesses
Get the Hang of The Technology
We all know that online teaching courses go with the use of several online digital technologies. It would help if you understood how the technology works.
Most of all, you will need to know how to troubleshoot these technology platforms and tools in case a system glitch will occur. A lot of platforms will have support to make sure everything is up and running.
On that note, it is highly recommended that you should invest in the right hardware and software. You must have the following:
- A reliable computer system
- A strong internet connection
- The best platform that best fit your needs
Find a Platform for Your Online Course
Thrive Apprentice
Thrive Themes ha a membership program. If you are using WordPress for your blog, you might want to consider checking them out.
They will give you the theme and online course in one package.
Teachable
Teachable is another platform. If you need a simple solution for hosting your course, Teachable can be a great option.
They will also help you market your course by getting affiliates. Affiliates can help market your course for a percentage of the profits.
Read: Affiliate Marketing Business Model: How to Set Up Your Systems
Udemy
Udemy is a good option for those that want to make a lot of courses and not find the customer. Udemy already has a lot of visitors coming to their platform.
You can get a percentage of the profits by hosting your course on Udemy. You won’t be able to charge a lot more money for your online courses.
Build An Adequate Working Environment
Online-based teaching also needs an appropriate working environment. You also need the right amount of self-discipline. If you miss doing this, you are making your online job a nightmare.
This nightmare can be avoided by simply building an adequate workspace that would best fit your online job. Make sure that you are setting a workplace that is solely intended for work only.
The workspace should also be user friendly and full of energy that will inspire you to work and be productive. Your work environment should be free from any noise distraction that may hinder you from keeping going with smooth online teaching.
It would help if you also considered having natural lighting and an ergonomic chair in setting up your ideal work environment.
Consistent Communication and Motivation
Your online presence requires consistent communication. Regular communication is essential in the online-based environment. You can start by giving a warm introduction and welcoming your online students to make them feel at ease with the online class.
Please provide all the needed information that your online students would need in case they need to contact you. Whenever you answer their question, you should also answer them promptly and provide elaborated instruction or feedback.
The learning capacity of every student varies differently. Thus, it is imperative to motivate your students towards the course. I highly recommend that you motivate your students in different ways, too, for online discussions or doing projects or performance tasks.
Setting deadlines may also help your students be encouraged to work and submit them before the deadline.
Consider Making a Private Facebook Group
Make a private Facebook group. Your group can ask you questions. After awhile, your group can start answering each other’s questions.
Building a community can be very helpful for your business. You become a trusted authority in the niche.
Break the New Online Ground and Encourage Discussions
Online-based courses tend to feel cold while the online class is ongoing. Thus, it is essential to innovate your discussion and encourage your students to participate in the debate.
It would be best to stimulate your online students to participate in the discussion to gain knowledge on the topic. This is also one way to gauge your students if follow the conversation or learn from the online course.
To stimulate discussion and motivating your students, you may need to assign them to read or monitor their progress.
Request For Feedback and Ask for Help
Request for help or feedback from your students. Make sure that you know how to analyze and consider constructive feedback over negative one. You must be open-minded and consider being more open with the online education system’s opportunities.
Steps to Start Teaching Online Courses
- Planning and Outlining
- Creating the Content – the process need not be time-consuming.
- Gather information about the topic
- Organize the content precisely
- Determine which content is relevant and essential to teach
- Build the presentation using various forms of media that would best catch the attention of your learners
Engage Learning Accessibility
Here are some collected steps to make you online course simple and accessible:
- Provide the online course access link through email
- Share the course access link on your social media platforms
- Embed the access link to the online course to your website
- Make sure to include the course access links on the products used by your students
- Provide the course access link through a chat channel or sending an SMS message
Easy Tips in Creating a Sustainable and Engaging Online Teaching:
- Make It Simple – the choices of words and instructions provided are simple and can easily be understood by your online students. As an online teacher, make sure to open yourself to your students’ questions to address their confusion about the course.
- Digital Homebase Establishment – go for digital home-based software that is easy to set-up for you and your students. It is best to have a single digital platform that your students can always visit for the most recent and updated information. The goal here is to make your students feel comfortable using and accessing the same tools.
- Student-Driven Assignments – online learning comes with many challenges for both the teachers and the learners. However, efficiency is the only key when designing great online learning experiences. You may focus on building long-term projects for your student to set clear instructions and deadlines that they need to comply with. You also want to consider building opportunities for your online students to interact or discuss what they have learned based on family or personal experiences.
- Track The Progress of your Students – Once you run through these steps to commence online teaching courses, it will be increasingly more manageable to do the online course creation. Creating the online system will help you gain variable insights into what you want to target your online students’ interests.
Suppose you have doubts or are intimidated by the use of technology like the microphone and video. In that case, you should learn how to overcome these challenges, most especially if you are new to teaching online. The camera and microphone may make you uncomfortable, but these are great tools to make your online teaching smooth and effective.
Here are a few collected tips on how to overcome the use of microphone and video during online teaching:
- Prepare Your Script – by writing something on paper or in a digital doc. You may also outline points you want to emphasize for live sessions. Moreover, if it makes recording easier, write out your lecture and read it while you film. But, as always, be aware of sounding monotonous or speaking too fast.
- Practice Makes It Perfect – Run through the whole outline of your course and practice what you want to teach or convey to your online students. Practice makes it perfect; you may want to rehearse in a video call with a friend or send a clip with a friend or to yourself. It is also best to spend some time getting to know the tools, mostly your microphone and video software. Whenever there are problems along the process, you know how to troubleshoot simple technical issues. It would be great to have a test as well before your online class.
To sum it all, online education is a fantastic opportunity that has full potential for the flexibility and convenience of learning online courses. This is becoming popular for online educators and an excellent opportunity to create exciting career development opportunities for individuals or businesses.
Online teaching may sound easy, but it is not something to jump into, especially if you don’t know the ins and out of the process. You should carefully do the research and plan out which teaching methods will best suit your online course.
With meticulous research and preparation of creating your online system, who knows, you could find yourself someday as one of the teaching pillars in online education.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the Platforms to create and sell online courses?
There are many platforms to create your online course and sell them to the public. Consider WordPress Thrive Apprentice, Teachable, and Udemy.
How Much Money Should I Charge For My Online Course?
You can have different courses for sale. Look at selling your course for $1000+. This increases the value of your course in other people’s eyes.
How Can I Market My Online Course?
Look at creating content, building a group, paying for advertising, and building an affiliate group that promotes your course.
