Preparing To Start Teaching Distance Learning Courses
As schools are increasingly finding themselves pressed to offer distance learning capabilities for their students, there are many teachers that are having to adapt to teaching in this new type of setting.
Utilize File-Sharing Capabilities
It can be a major challenge to keep all of your students covering the same materials throughout the course of the semester. One option that can help you with this is utilizing file-sharing services that are offered by the distance learning platform. This makes it possible to easily distribute files that contain reading materials, homework assignments, and other documents that the students will need to complete assignments or to cover important topics. By using the file-sharing capabilities of the distance learning platform, you ensure that your students are accessing the correct documents and that they are able to access them as easily as possible. Depending on the platform, you may also be able to review when the students accessed these documents, which can be extremely useful information for the instructor.
Keep Your Lesson Plans More Tightly Focused
The process of switching to teaching on distance learning platforms requires a significant amount of change from the setting and environment that the instructor may be familiar with. To help give yourself a chance to make this adjustment as smooth as possible, it is advisable to keep your lesson plans more tightly focused. As you grow more comfortable with using these platforms and learn to use them to their fullest capabilities, you may find that you can significantly expand the materials that you cover in each lesson without compromising the quality of the instructions that you provide.
Prioritize Communication With Your Students
There are many students that will struggle with attending a distance learning course due to the lack of structure and the difficulty with communicating with some instructors. Prioritizing having open and clear communication options for the students will help assuage some of these problems. Making it easy for students to communicate with you can ensure that they are able to get their questions answered in a timely fashion, but this is not the only mode of communication that you should encourage. When possible, asking questions of the students that are in the lesson can help to keep them engaged, and it may also provide some of the familiar structure that a traditional class setting can offer to students.
For more information, contact a company that offers distance learning resources for teachers.