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The online learning market is looking more optimistic than ever.
In our own LearnWorlds’ Academy, we saw a huge increase in students, almost tripling in just 8 months and surpassing ten thousand students. Not only that, but we have seen a 500% increase in new instructors using LearnWorlds, coming to seek their path to e-learning!
Are you interested in teaching?
Do you want to follow the trends of this new era and start making a living from it?
If you answered yes to both of these questions, then I have a great way to help you start your journey to online teaching. Here I want to discuss:
With the right tools, you can design robust educational ecosystems that are flexible, inclusive, and student-centered. All it takes is dedication, study, and constant effort.
If you don’t have an online school yet, and want to start one we have created
These two guides are completely free and will provide you a definite help and guide you step by step on how to start teaching online.
The Rising Trend of Remote Teaching
Without a doubt, selling online courses is a booming market worldwide, and research statistics prove it. People are already spending millions of dollars on online courses.
Google Trends shows that several course subjects are getting more attention lately. Google searches are increasing on many topics.
Here are only a few examples of popular subject areas during the first half of 2020 until August. In the following diagrams, you can see the demand in the different subjects of online education:
Language learning
Creative Arts
Marketing
Cooking and nutrition
Online classes for kids
If you want to see more top trending course topics this year, read the related blog post here.
Training, courses, and online education is much-seeked out right now. Every subject that can be taught online is in high-demand, don’t miss the opportunity!
The main idea behind creating value-packed courses is finding a topic that you have a good knowledge of, one that you love and is profitable enough to become a business.
Then, all you need is the right online learning platform to start creating effective online learning.
Convenient Forms of Online Learning
Live video sessions
Live video sessions (webinars) are the most potent weapons a course instructor has access to. It’s the crown jewel of your teaching.
And because of its video-based characteristics, a webinar offers enormous potential for creating content for your courses.
As an online event, a webinar allows sharing slides and other interactive elements that can give, receive and discuss information in real-time and encourage participation through chat boxes, Q&A, polls and surveys, and many other features.
Self-paced courses
Self-paced courses allow students to view lectures, access materials, and collaborate with teachers and peers on their schedule.
Lectures might be pre-recorded or presented on a program like Microsoft PowerPoint, perhaps with instructor voice-over.
What you will choose from those two course forms, live (synchronous) or self-paced (asynchronous), really depends on what best meets your learners’ needs.
How Easy is it to Get my Teaching Online?
During the first COVID-19 crisis, instructors and educators used various fully remote training solutions to continue teaching online. This practice is known as “Emergency Remote Teaching.”
Emergency Remote Teaching aimed to provide access to instruction that was quick to set up and reliably available during the emergency, as you had in one place various content formats like readings, videos, and audio.
However, Emergency Remote Teaching can be accepted as a temporary solution to an immediate problem and not as a long-term solution.
Long Term Effective Online Education requires more than a change in delivery means. It requires more high-quality curriculum and enhanced learning experiences.
The “just get it online” thing directly contradicts the time and effort generally dedicated to developing a quality online course.
This means that it may take 2-6 months of reviewing, again and again, your course effectiveness in terms of engagement and learning results and fighting with various challenges.
However, setting up your first course and starting selling shouldn’t take more than a few weeks.
While going for effective online learning, you should embrace several advanced online learning practices, among others, making your content interactive, adding live sessions or pre-recorded lectures, using gamification, building learning communities with asynchronous and synchronous discussion boards or having weekly or daily email communication.
All of those are available in LearnWorlds, and I will show you later on why. Let’s first dive into the four secrets for successful online courses!
The Four Secrets for Successful Online Courses
1Embrace instructional design
Offering virtual learning calls for effort beyond the mere application of existing technology solutions.
We know from research that effective online learning results from careful instructional design and planning, using a systematic model. A course development can take months when done correctly.
Research on types of interaction, including student–content, student-student, and student – teacher, is among the more robust research bodies in online learning. The presence of each of these types of interaction in an online learning environment increases the learning outcomes.
Thus, careful planning for online learning includes identifying the content to cover and supporting different interactions essential to the learning process.
2Design mobile eLearning Content
Mobile learning (easily accessed via smartphones, laptops, and iPads) holds key advantages for learners. They can have access to up-to-date course materials and relevant content anywhere, anytime.
We have to acknowledge that students and employees are now accustomed to using their mobile devices for learning to work through course materials at their own pace.
With these strategies, you will also know that you create a more positive and collaborative learning environment for your students.
3Use a variety of multimedia resources
A successful instructor uses different mediums (video, text, visuals, etc.) for introducing each new lesson or concept.
For some of your students, learning a particular subject by watching a video may be most effective. Others may learn better by participating in online discussion forums.
Providing video, audio, reading, and interactive content will make your course more engaging. Take the time to learn more about each of your students to gradually get a better feel for what works with your learners.
Read also: The 34 Best Training Video Software
4Provide ongoing feedback
Careful planning for online learning includes identifying the content to cover and carefully supporting learners with feedback.
As an online teacher, your feedback will help to create an eLearning experience that is informative, engaging, and motivational for the learner.
You can encourage group feedback through collaborative exercises, which also helps to promote peer engagement.
Your feedback should be continuous during the course, with constructive input offered as soon as possible so that students can identify which behaviors or skills need to be improved.
Have you read?
Why LearnWorlds Has All You Need
If searching for an LMS to create an online learning environment with literally endless possibilities, you don’t have to go any further than LearnWorlds.
LearnWorlds provides everything needed to create an exceptional e-Learning environment. Here, I will show you why.
The first thing I’d like to mention is this: Its school design options.
In LearnWorlds, you can create any landing page type you want because there is a rich collection of ready-made templates you can choose from to create beautiful pages easily.
That means that you can personalize your school within minutes, without the need for any technical knowledge or coding skills (although you can also customize the CSS code).
In the same way, you can create any page that either has to offer more to your current students, helps to get new ones onboard your virtual school, or serves a specific goal you want to achieve:
What’s more, LearnWorlds allows you to add any activity type you like (webinars, PDFs, ebooks, audio, video, HTML5, exams, SCORM, and embedded content in the online classes).
And it does this in a way that makes everything interactive. For example, you can make your videos interactive and allow learners to interact with the video frame elements.
Also, in LearnWorlds, you can conduct instant live classes through webinars right from your school.
This means that you don’t have to go with an external webinar platform.
In LearnWorlds ebooks, learners can highlight the text, take notes, add stars or comments in social media for a particular part of the text.
If you wish to learn more about those features, here are some further readings:
How to take notes in the Interactive Ebook – Workpad / Best Resources
Using Interactive Video in Learning
How to Create Interactive Learning Content Online With H5P
How to Start an Online School in 2020
The last LearnWorlds asset I want to mention here is its tracking capabilities.
With LearnWorlds’ grade book and reporting center, you can track learners’ progress on any course and their performance.
Is Online Teaching Really Profitable?
Βuilding, launching, and marketing an online course does take a considerable amount of upfront effort. But, its earning potential is through the roof.
It won’t always be easy. You’ll have to work hard and push through mistakes and failures along the way.
And, there’s no such thing as an online get-rich-quick scheme. The hard truth is that the only ways to make money with online classrooms involve putting in real time, effort, and sweat.
However, I assure you that once you put in the time and dedication, you’ll be able to continue to sell your courses and make money for months and years.
The Future of Online Learning
Hopefully, the COVID-19 threat will soon be a memory.
When it is, we should not only return to our teaching and learning practices before the virus, forgetting everything about effective online learning.
Online learning is accessible and flexible, and this is what makes it so appealing. And, as long as it offers the same quality as traditional education, it will continue to be embraced by learners.
The possible need for effective online learning must become part of every business and faculty.
But, we should always remember that learning is both a social and a cognitive process, not merely a matter of information transmission.
And, this calls for a very careful content design and the use of a robust LMS to achieve the best results, like I explained earlier in this blog post. Why don’t you give it a shot with LearnWorlds?
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Anthea is a Course designer and Content Creator for the LearnWorlds team. She holds years of experience in instructional design and teaching. With a Master of Education (M.Ed.) focused in Modern Teaching Methods & ICT (Information & Communications Technology), she supplements her knowledge with practical experience in E-Learning and Educational Technology.
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