Introduction

If you are an expert in your field, and now teach adults online, but don’t have any formal training as a teacher, you may find these tips useful.

Before the course starts

It’s useful to get students involved and excited before the course starts. I would suggest the following:

·      Create a pre-course questionnaire, as I described in Converting an offline course to an online one. This can get students to start thinking about their expectations for the course. It can also enable you to find out what students already know and what they hope to gain from the course.

·      Make materials available well in advance. Everyone is busy, so anything sent out at the last minute is less likely to be looked at, or even seen in the first place.

·      Send students a welcome email. If some people do not respond, send a follow-up email.

·      Make sure your objectives (see below) are clearly set out.

For example, I will be teaching a short course on a creative writing movement called the Oulipo, and their techniques. I will be using Google Classroom and will organise my materials under various headings such as “Before the course”, “Exercises” and “Further reading”.

I will post a welcome message in the Stream, and any students who have joined the classroom will receive it. However, in order to maximise the chances of students seeing the message, I will be emailing them with instructions on how to access the classroom (which the City Lit does too).

The lesson

Start on time

When tutors say, at the time the lesson is scheduled for, “We’ll just give the others a few minutes”, I always think: “Why? We all managed to get here on time. Why are the people who are not here somehow more important than the people who are?”

When I was a school teacher I always started my lessons on time, even if only half the class was present. I only ever needed to do that once with each group, because the kids learnt from experience that if they arrived late they would miss important information, which they would then have to try and glean from their friends or wait till the next lesson.

Incorporate discussion

I think you have to consider that (a) not many people can fully concentrate on a lecture for 90 minutes, and (b) if they wanted to then there are plenty of long videos they can find and watch instead.

Even if you reject those points, and even if you believe students can learn nothing from each other (which would almost always be an an unjustified assumption), discussion can help to consolidate what has been covered.

Also, when it comes to adults undertaking non-certified courses for their own pleasure, they are there to socialise as well as to learn the topic. Therefore in my opinion some effort should be made to get them talking to each other.

Objectives

What will students achieve as a result of doing your course or attending your session if you are one of several tutors on the course? If you don’t like the idea of grappling with “SMART” objectives or “intended learning outcomes”, then at the very least adopt the age-old definition of teaching:

First I tells ‘em what I’m gonna tell ‘em

Then I tells ‘em

Then I tells ‘em what I told ‘em

A good position to adopt is to assume your students know nothing about the subject, unless you have very good reasons to think they might.

What’s the story?

Every lesson should have a story, or narrative, or story arc, or journey – whatever you want to call it. In other words, there should be a clear route from the beginning of the lesson to the end. To put it another way, if you meander all over the place, you may be able to see the wood for the trees, but your students probably won’t.

For example, if the lesson is called “World War 1”, you might want to look at the causes and consequences of it. However, if you start at 1914, then leap back to 1870, then jump forward to 1939, then go back to 1916, all you will achieve is causing students to become confused, and possibly even giddy. If you feel that all this leaping around is essential, then you should provide students with signposts (see below).

Signposts

You might know where you’re going, but unless your students are telepathic they will be in the dark. Even a simple sheet or a slide with key points on will be useful.

Taking the example used above, the sheet or slide might comprise the following points:

1.     The trigger cause of WW1 (1914).

2.     The start of the troubles (1870).

3.     The longer term consequences of WW1 (1939).

4.     The lost opportunity (1916).

Technology

Learn how to use the technology properly, or at least to a minimum standard. For example, if you are teaching via Zoom, then:

·      Ask students to mute themselves, or mute them yourself if you have the necessary set of permissions to do so.

·      Ask students to turn their video off if you are sharing your screen, or do it for them. Not only will that help to ensure a better connection if you are showing a video, it will also be less distracting for the class (because people shuffling and moving while you are trying to watch a presentation can be very distracting indeed).

·      If you want the class to watch a video during the class, show it via screen share. Don’t send everyone the link and then ask them to watch it by themselves. If people haven’t muted their device, it creates echoes for everyone, and is a horrible experience.

·      If you are showing a PowerPoint (or similar), do so in Presentation or Show mode, not Edit mode. Otherwise the slides appear much smaller than they should, and may even be unreadable.

·      If you play a clip, and some people say they couldn’t hear it or see it properly, don’t say “Ah, some of you saw and heard it ok”, and leave it at that. Play it again – properly.

Energy

Finally, try to sound excited. Put some energy into it. If you look like you’re bored, or mumble almost to yourself, why should anyone else be interested?

See also:

Tackling tech troubles while teaching online