Effective Tips for Teaching Online: Boost Engagement and Land Your Next Teaching Gig
Transforming Teacher Roles in Online Education: Shift from Instructor to Facilitator for Better Student Engagement and Power Balance
It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.
— Albert Einstein
Supplementing a writer’s income by teaching online places the writer in the position of a tugboat and the students, one giant ship being pushed out into the sea.
An online instructor should be aware that students are the primary concern of their attention, leaving their interests far behind. While compensation and benefits are essential and worth advocating for, students should always be the focus.
Many university administrators do not want lecturers or instructors who dispense (referred to as banking) information as if the students were sponges who will soak it in.
Creativity and engagement are sparked by an online professor taking action to make classes equitable, cooperative, and engaging.
The chart below shows the power structure in the online classroom needs to be leveled for optimal student performance.
Teacher Dispensing Information
Teacher
↓
↓
↓
Student
Teacher and Student Sharing Information
Teacher → → → Student
Universities strive to hire facilitators, a position that levels the playing field between teacher and student. Facilitators are instructors who work with students by involving themselves in the nitty-gritty crafts of reading, writing, and research.
Facilitator Organizational Writing Skills
Facilitators must inform students how important it is to learn to write well and that often employers and fellow employees will judge their writing.
Most online courses emphasize communication, especially writing, focusing on making your point about any topic. Writing well requires organizing posts and essays logically, beginning with a general statement about the topic with the main points you will follow.
Each paragraph covers one point by stating a topic sentence about it and then details about that topic sentence. Facilitators must model this type of writing in their responses to students.
Sometimes, research is necessary to make valid arguments. Online facilitators can strive to teach students to research reputable sources in online library databases. Research can be defined as searching for questions that the writer comes up with to find answers to pertinent questions about background information and research study results associated with the topic on which the writer focuses.
Finally, student engagement is all about building a curriculum of choices. Facilitators find topics based on students’ real lives and interests by response elicitation. Then, they compile lists of writing prompts and reading selections, and they never fear updating the existing curriculum by adding selections that spur the imaginations of both facilitator and student.
Student engagement also requires that facilitators be learners, always willing to learn more material while instructing.
Skills online instructor candidates should focus on are:
Matthew Bamberg has been an online educator for one-quarter of a century. He recently received the 2023 Delphi Award for Adjunct Professors in the Sanford School of Education at the National University in San Diego, where he has been a part-time professor for 25 years. He has taught online composition courses at the University of Arizona Global Campus and the University of Phoenix and photography courses at the University of California Riverside.
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