Your Professional Development Power Point

Effective and Ineffective Online Instruction

Online teaching being quite different from in-person teaching requires some essential expertise to effectively communicate and impart knowledge to the students. The three most important characteristics of an effective online instructor are as under:

1) Communication Skills and command over language:

Since the teacher is not directly facing the audience (students) in the case of online teaching, the use of expressions and gestures is almost nullified. The instructor must have complete command of the language so that effective communication is ensured. The instructor should also be aware of the possible modes that might be used to serve the purpose of teaching. For example, if during a class, the students are not able to understand the instructions, the teacher should understand that the communication may be improved by sending some written instructions to students or recording a short audio or video message which may better explain all the instructions.

2)Ability to engage students

Maintaining the interest of the students has always been a challenge for the teachers in conventional as well as in the online mode of teaching. The teacher must be equipped with the skillset to keep the students engaged in the class through their creativity and inclusive way of teaching. In the conventional method where there was direct interaction between students and teachers, and the teacher could directly always look at all the students, it was convenient for the teacher to know which student needs more attention, but in the online mode of teaching different skills are required by a teacher to make sure that the students are properly involved.

3)Supportive Personal Qualities

An effective online teacher is always encouraging and adaptable. Lack of encouragement may result in the students not being able to ask the questions freely and with the suppressed state of mind, the whole purpose of imparting education will fade away. For instance, a student may not be confident or comfortable enough to ask a certain question if the teacher has not been able to build a sound relationship with the student. The student may end up asking the question from his fellow students instead of asking the teacher. In such situations the teacher should make sure to address individual students as well as the whole class to let them know that there are several questions asked by different students, to let them know that they are not alone who could not understand some parts properly.

References

Lister, M. (2014). Trends in the design of e-learning and online learning. Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, 10(4), 671.