Sylvia Guinan, online English teacher, website editor and winner of the British Council TeachingEnglish blog award, walks us through the opportunities and pitfalls of teaching online in one of our top five articles of all time, illustrated by artist Jamie Johnson.
There are many different things to consider when it comes to online teaching. The good news is that online teaching opens up new levels of creativity and opportunity for you as a teacher. In a way, it drives you to surpass yourself and focus more on best practice as well as innovation. As for students, they deserve to be taught with 21st-century technology.
Technology basics
Many freelance teachers teach through Skype. It’s the simplest thing to do, as Skype is very stable for audio quality and you simply screen-share your desktop to show PowerPoint presentations or work directly from educational websites. While Skype works for small-scale teaching, you need something more sophisticated for larger groups or getting your school or organisation online. When I started, I made a beeline for platforms with virtual classrooms, as it just seemed the natural thing to do. I found a community of teachers on WizIQ who were very inspiring, and we worked together for two years on our Edupunk creativity experiments. This was how I learnt the ropes, and learnt how to manage groups online. Once a week, I held an open creativity class on poetry, games or story-telling, and students from all over the world would log in.
Resources and content creation
As for resources, the following sites have wonderful materials if you don’t feel like re-inventing the wheel. One outstanding find is the English Out There initiative by Jason West who has created six-level courses of English that incorporate the use of social media for fluency development, confidence-building and social/emotional engagement. ESOL Cambridge has free online exam materials for teachers and other online preparation courses. The British Council also provides a lot of online support for IELTS preparation. Other great resources can be found at busyteacher.org, EFL classroom 2.0, and TeachersPayTeachers.
Beyond that, you may wish to supplement your basic course offerings, specialise for specific purposes or simply follow your own instincts and inspiration. This is when your own content creation comes into play. I highly recommend Eduglogster for creating user-friendly, brain-friendly electronic posters, and Prezi for more extensive creations. PowerPoint will be your essential, as only PowerPoint will work in most virtual classrooms, though you can screen-share to work on interactive sites. My number-one tip here is to make PowerPoint presentations as visual as possible.
The importance of personal learning networks
I can’t stress strongly enough how important my personal learning network has been to me. For a freelance teacher, associating with others on the cutting edge of technology in education has been a huge motivational factor. When you are challenged by the excellence of others, you become more daring, professional and creative. I can’t imagine what it would be like to set oneself up on Skype, post a few adverts around and then stare at your screen waiting for students to show up (if they ever do in this massive cyber vacuum where no-one knows who you are). Pro-activity and passion are a must for success.
Motivating students online
This depends on the context of your online teaching model. If I had a class in a brick-and-mortar school and a language lab, I would have a field day. The fun activities one can use to supplement courses and have students creating their own educational masterpieces are endless. My favourite activities would include comic creation, video-making and story-telling via multimedia.
You can motivate students online through interactive learning environments. In the virtual classroom, your camera is king. You’ve got to be as expressive as possible to make students feel as if they are in the same room as you. There is an art to using the chatbox as a back channel, and this is often far more effective than a traditional classroom, as you can have some students on audio, and/or video, while the others comment, chat, or interact through the chat box. A huge advantage in my book is the break-out room feature in most of the best virtual classrooms. You can divide classes into groups or pairs and send them to different sub-classrooms. In this way, you can introduce many new games as you have the advantage of information gaps to exploit. Then, there is the extra communicative element for students, a greater sense of intimacy between classmates, bonding, creativity and lots of fun.
This can be extended to 24/7 facilitation through learning management systems (LMS). The most widely known LMS is Moodle. If, at first, Moodle is too challenging, there are course feeds on sites such as WizIQ. I also recommend the ClubEFL edutainment learning space. This would definitely motivate learners. Language schools all over Greece are enrolling their students onto ClubEFL and children are making their own quizzes, blogs and much, much more. From a psychological point of view, 24/7 facilitation gives all students a chance to get the teacher’s undivided attention and helps shy students to open up more. This doesn’t mean that you are at their beck and call; it just means that some of your work will be managed asynchronously.
Building rapport
Learning management systems give you the backdrop you need for informal communication between live online sessions. You can manage online discussions with your classes, just like on Facebook. In fact, there’s nothing to stop you setting up private class groups on Facebook and engaging students directly from there. Working between Facebook and your chosen LMS would be ideal. It would entail building up rapport via text, chat and multimedia, using environments that students love, and adding more substantial projects and materials to the LMS. Some teachers also use Twitter as a tool to get students working intelligently while building relations.
My favourite way to engage with students is to give them creative challenges. If you ask them to create a video or comic, they will have great fun creating and sharing, and overcome any reservations they may be feeling. You can also help them explore the Internet mindfully by setting up engaging webquests.
Pitfalls to avoid
Social media
If you are a freelance teacher, you will need to have a dynamic online presence. Having your own teaching page with a unique teaching brand that reflects your professional values helps a lot. The pitfall, however, is getting sucked into a social quagmire. You’ve got to be aware of this and keep a professional distance.
Webtool mania
Webtools are, of course, creative and useful for online teaching, but be realistic about how many you can sensibly use, and avoid the trap of playing with too many toys. My criteria for this is simplicity. Tools should fulfill educational objectives on a deep level.
Online schools
There are many unprofessional ‘online schools’ exploiting teachers online. Do not accept substandard pay, even if you are still learning the ropes.
Teachers, visit our TeachingEnglish website for more lesson plans and activities, and find out how you can become a TeachingEnglish blogger.
This article is one of our top five most-read of all time.
Additional resources and personal learning networks that have made a difference to Sylvia Guinan since 2014 are Nik Peachey’s award-winning Digital Classroom resources for creativity, Off2class online resources for when she had little or no time to create new content, the Learndash learning management system for building courses on her own website, and the IATEFL LTSIG committee with whom she worked as website editor from 2015 to 2018.
Jamie Johnson is an artist and illustrator based in Glasgow, Scotland. He works in painting, collage, drawing and various digital media techniques. Jamie has exhibited his work in galleries around the UK, Europe and North America, most recently as a solo show at Chopping Block Gallery in London. He continues to work with a wide variety of clients as an illustrator and designer, alongside a personal interest in community-based projects.
