As the academic scenario is supposed to change at a rapid pace, the development of e-learning and e-teaching becomes important. Teachers who work within the framework of academic institutions can use this guide to understand the process of developing an online education system. The guide to e-teaching will help you to initiate and continue high-quality e-learning through a variety of electronic platforms.
1-Build an Online Community
Online community building is important to empower the educational environment. Day to day communication whether to discuss, acknowledge, announce, clarify, appreciation gives an exceptional touch to e-learning. To build an online community, make a decision on what platform you would use for community building (public/private/specific team members).
Just click on the following link(s) and create your community in seconds.
If you do not want outsiders to have access to your online community until you permit, make sure to enable your privacy settings. Do not forget to display a list of recent discussions for the discussion /forum. Novice members or first-time users may be more apt to join in the discussion if they see what is currently going on in your community.
- Avoid creating too many categories at the start. Keep it simple and let your categories evolve. You may also define the roles to your students and scholars. Decide what roles will be included within your community, such as ‘moderators’, ‘co-moderators’ ‘admins’ and so on. Do not forget to restrict new accounts from posting pictures or unnecessary links. Be aware of spam controls. Adjust the settings if you find that valid content is being labeled as spam.
- Think about the awards you may attribute to your members/ students. This could be honored badges.
2-Lectures/ Discussions
You may create audio or video files of your lectures or demonstrations. Not all information should be provided through downloaded audios, videos, pdf, word files. Try to incorporate online bulletin boards and ppt and share your voice over through the ‘Zoom In’ cloud meetings.
Click on the link https://zoom.us/
Find “Join a Meeting/ Sign Up” free tab. You can find the tab on the top right corner of the homepage. When prompted, add your meeting ID which can be a 10-12 digit number. The meeting ID should be provided by the host. You may also download the ‘Zoom In’ application through your android mobile phone ‘Play Store’. Send your members the meeting details, including the Meeting ID and/time, etc. You may share your computer screen with the team members. Allow other users to share their screen to the entire conference call! To do so, click “Share Screen” at the bottom of the window.
You may offer a discussion about a topic daily, weekly depending on your convenience. Both synchronous and asynchronous discussions can be used in online live classrooms.
3-Facilitate Assignments/Projects
- Post a message to the bulletin board with a guideline for formatting projects/ assignments. Include the title of the assignment, description of the assignment, format (number of words, file type: word/pdf, mode: email/ blog/website, plagiarism report, etc.) Post your grading and evaluation criteria and point values for each unit.
- Download learners’ files and use a marking tool like words reviewing toolbar and keep on adding comments accordingly. If you are not comfortable marking the documents on Word, then download it, take a print and mark papers the traditional way. Later, take pictures of the printed document, attach in an email and send it to the sender as feedback.
4-Create Online Test/Sessional
Get an experience of online sessional creation!! Create your test with a searchable name and description. Check advance settings to make your test specific and search-friendly. Through this website, you may conduct and organize assessments as you desired. You can also publish and unpublish your test with just one click.
Site: https://testyou.in/Login.aspx
5-E- Feedback
In online learning, students are largely responsible for completing their assignments independently from the instructor’s guidance. Online teachers may not be able to supervise an individual’s project/assignment closely. However, online teachers can help learners by sending feedback emails. They can keep tabs on learners who have difficulty understanding and completing assignments. Your workload would increase when you start sending emails frequently. However, email is not the only way to motivate or guide learners, but it is popular among students and teachers.
6-Time Management
For effective time management, you may adopt/adapt to the following weekly time table.
To avoid spending too much time on online activities, develop some effective measures to save time.
- Recycle emails. Save/ archive emails and address the common concerns in live online classes.
- Being online all the time is not desirable. What is required is the focus on learners when you are online.
- Check email before the session to make sure that there are not problems, technical issues or messages about the upcoming class.
Conclusion
E-Teaching is a detail-oriented activity on site. Maintaining files, attending students’ problems, communicating frequently and overseeing their progress are a few concerns indicating a need for strong online pedagogy. Understanding the idea of online teaching not only facilitates teachers to plan an online curriculum but also helps them to check the health of the curriculum and be able to recommend materials, incorporate suggestions and updated syllabus.
Reference:
- Best Online Community. Honoring the Best of Social Media and Digital. https://shortyawards.com/category/8th/online-community. Retrieved on 28-03-2020
- Create your own Social Network. Groupanic. https://www.groupanic.com/. Retrieved on 28-03-2020
- Porter, L.W. (2004). Developing an Online Curriculum: Technologies and Techniques. Hershey: Information Science Publishing. Retrieved on 28-03-2020
- Test You. Online Test Creator. https://www.testyou.in/Admin/index.asp. Retrieved on 28-03-2020
- Zoom In Cloud Meetings. https://zoom.us/ Retrieved on 28-03-2020
