Simple tips to become an online tutor
Make a business
Besides a professional career, tutoring online is more like a lifestyle. Expert online tutors rarely work regular hours, and as specialists in their niche, often come up with new teaching methods to revolutionize online tutoring. As you have landed upon this blog, we assume you are enthusiastically looking for how to become an online tutor.
First of all, congratulations! Online tutoring has been around for so long now, but now is the perfect time to enter the online education industry as it is at its peak growth point. But, how do you set up a tutoring business, grow efficiently, and tutor more students in a highly competitive environment?
Here are some simple tips for establishing your career as an online tutor (Yes, all are proven techniques that actually work!). So let's dive in right away!
Set up a professional working environment
The importance of having an adequate working environment cannot be stressed enough. Even if you are working from home, your professionalism and self-discipline must talk for you.
Although you can teach from anywhere in the world, you must create a perfect teaching environment for yourself. Keep the space inviting as it is where you spend your productive hours. Keep the teaching environment distraction-free so that your students can have a great learning experience.
Plan your online classes
Live online classes are quite different from classroom-based sessions and hence require a different approach. As your learners are not physically present, their needs are different, and the type of attention and engagement needed is also different. Think from their perspective and offer the support they need at a given time. Give clear instructions, boundaries, and guidelines and clarify how the class will process. This will help you to create and maintain a good learning environment. Prior to the start of your class, share the syllabus and course materials with your students as well.
Conduct practice sessions
Before live classes:
• Conduct practice sessions to rehearse your online classes.
• Rehearse as if you are talking to your learners.
• Include every detail, step by step, exactly as you plan to do in your live class.
For example, if you plan to ask questions to students every 25 minutes, include that also during practicing. Rehearsing in front of the camera will also make you more comfortable during the real presentation.
Integrate both synchronous and asynchronous teaching styles
Synchronous tutoring implies tutoring your students online by connecting with them live using video streaming tools like zoom or skype. Live streaming allows interaction of learners with tutors through chats which helps to make the class more dynamic. Along with synchronous tutoring, integrate asynchronous teaching as you which means selling online courses which your learners can use for self-paced learning.
Synchronous tutoring
• Students and teachers can interact in real-time like in a normal classroom.
• Students feel the sense of a community that fosters community-based learning.
• Better interaction and engagement.
• Learners can exchange questions and doubts.
Asynchronous tutoring
• Learners can progress through self-paced courses based on their schedules.
• All learners can take part in the same learning activities no matter what time zone they are from.
• Can review lectures anytime.
• Creating learning content like video lectures and courses can save time for tutors as they can use it multiple times.
• Once created, online courses bring recurring income for online tutors.
Choose a platform to host live classes
When it comes to hosting online classes, there are many options. However, the best tool you choose must align with your context and goals. There is something special about conducting live classes using video. It's exactly like being with your students in person. You can use tutor management software to build your online tutoring marketplace to achieve that.
For example, Pinlearn is an excellent tutor management software integrated with Zoom to facilitate conducting live online classes, both one-to-one and group classes. In addition, it helps to set up an online tutoring website that can help you structure online courses, schedule live online classes, accept payment, and do a lot more.
Maintain good communication with your learners
Make it a practice to communicate with students individually as students can easily get distracted in an online learning environment. And sometimes, they require your intervention to get back on track. Try interacting with your students to keep them engaged and accountable. Ensure that you dedicate a specific amount of time each week where you will be available for interaction and let your learners know the timings when they can contact you outside your online classroom.
Design your digital experience
Think about how you want to deliver your classes- Whether it should be live classes or a combination of both live and pre-recorded classes. It would be best to consider where you are planning to teach from. Do you want to teach from your living room or home office? Maybe you want to teach from your normal classes and broadcast your classes to your learners.
Keep the following things in mind to deliver the best user experience when teaching online.
Ease of use
Make sure the teaching environment you use is easy to access.
Student interaction
Facilitate student interaction to make the learning process much more like real interactions in a classroom.
Custom branding
Make sure you have adequate support to create custom branding for your tutoring business.
Collect valuable feedback from students
Student feedback can be valuable when you are trying to design online classes or courses that your students will benefit from. Ask your students for their valuable feedback to understand how satisfied they are with your classes. For example, are they receiving all the necessary information they require? Are they getting adequate support during the classes? Do they know where to look for help in case of any challenges regarding learning or usage of the platform? Remember that student feedback works as constructive feedback on what to improve in your classes.
Conclusion
Online teaching is a wonderful opportunity as it's a growing market for potential teachers, current educators, and giant educational institutions. Conduct proper research, create a professional teaching setup, plan your teachings, and start tutoring your students with confidence. Once you start approaching your classes with careful planning, you will be laying the groundwork for better online tutoring that can help you find success in your career.
About the Creator
Kathy Alameda
Kathy Alameda is an eLearning blogger and analyst, better known as the writer of Pinlearn, one of the biggest platforms dedicated to all things eLearning, jam-packed with articles and directories for all your L&D needs.
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