Being an educator requires constant development and that is no different when you teach online. It is even more important when you need to know more technologies and this article will show you how.
Here are the skills and training required to teach online:
- Soft Skills
- Communicating Skills
- Presentation Skills
- Classroom Management
- Dispute Resolution
- Technical Skills
- Instructional Design
- Web Development
- Assessment Tools
- Content Development
- 1 on 1 Online Tutoring
- Group Online Conferencing
- Software Product Training
- eLearning Packaging
- Single Sourcing Tools
- Learning Management Systems
- Office Suite
- Basic Operating System
In each of the sections below we will also discuss the exact courses and skills to develop as well as link to those courses so you can use this article as a checklist of sorts.
So let’s look at what will make you the best online teacher and secure your career for many years to come.
Understanding Skills Required
Online teaching is slightly different to teaching in the classroom.
Depending on the topic you are teaching there are certain skills you must have:
- Online Tutoring
- Communication
- Technology
- Time Management
- Assessment
To teach online you need to understand how online tutoring or teaching is different to in class teaching. Not only do you need to know how to draw people into the class but also how to make them feel at ease remotely.
Communication skills are even more important when teaching online due to the fact that you may not be able to read body language. If you are teaching via video conferencing you will but with other forms of training you may not be able too. This means you have to be more vocal with your active listening skills and use the in built chat feature to request feedback about the training frequently. You also need to make sure all students feel equally loved.
Being an online educator requires you to have certain technological competencies like:
- Operating Systems
- Learning Management Systems
- Content Creation Tools
- Web Conferences
- Live Virtual Classrooms
Time management is important for both students and teachers. When teaching online it can take longer for your students to complete their work and you need to factor this in. If you are running live classes it can also take longer to fix students technical problems so you need to be aware of what may go wrong and have a quick method to deal with it.
Assessment skills allow educators to determine whether learners have or have not learned certain competencies. It comes in two formats (formative and summative) and should be constantly used to adapt your teaching techniques to the audience you are working with. While this is the same whether you are teaching in the classroom or online the method of how you do this is slightly different.
ARTICLE: 27 Interactive Assignment Ideas For Online Students
Future Proof Your Job
Being an online teacher myself I have learned many important things. Skills that are constantly required now may not be so important 5 years from now. It is very important to enroll in courses and engage in your communities that allow you to future proof your job with skills and knowledge.
I personally always keep an eye on the job websites to see what the current job market requires of educators. More and more you have to have a sound grounding in IT technologies and Learning Management Systems as well as how to quickly develop digital content.
This article will provide you with some of those current skills you may wish to work towards to future proof your career.
Different Methods of Training
When you are learning to teach online whether you are already a teacher or if you are just wanting to share your skills online there are many ways you can do that.
Here are some of the methods you can use:
- Self-Taught
- Paid Online Courses
- Official Vendor Courses
- Vocational Training
- University
Let’s figure out which one works best for you!
Self Taught
There are heaps of ways you can learn to teach online for free. You can teach yourself all the skills you need to know but it just may take you longer not knowing what to prioritise. You can look at Youtube Playlists for each of the suggested skills in this article and software packages to learn. You can search the web for free courses. You can volunteer at local schools and universities or non-profit companies to get the confidence to be in front of people. You could also join a local Toastmasters to get that same confidence to present and be able to control a room.
Paid Online Courses
If you do not want to spend a fortune on a training session then you might want to take a look at the Udemy teaching platform. It features heaps of courses that are designed to help educators improve their skills and competencies.
All the skills you can find in this article you can generally find on Udemy. Whether that is a course on Articule 360 or the Comptia CTT+ you can find it on there. Udemy comes up with plenty of discounts and promotions that you can take advantage of.
PRO TIP: Training on Youtube is getting better and better if you do a search for a topic and then change the filter to playlist you can get the whole training courses on pretty much anything. I do this before paying for a course to see if the money gives me better training. Udemy teachers have to talk with students to that is of value and you can talk to other students as well.
If this sounds like a suitable training method for you I suggest taking a look at the following link:
LINK: Udemy Top Teacher Training Courses
Official Vendor Courses
There are plenty of vendors that offer courses designed for teachers. These courses are not normally nationally accredited courses like Vocational or University study but are laser focused on the skills you need to actually use a specific piece of hardware or software.
Examples of these types of training are:
Vocational Training
Vocational Education and Training is Nationally Accredited training that is post secondary school study. This is recognised as higher education study and hands on skills based. In most countries they were referred to as Technical Colleges where you went and did an apprenticeship but are not across all study areas. As well as gaining job ready skills you can use these courses as a University pathway.
In Australia they are run by the government as TAFE and also as private registered training organisations and you can find the training they provide here:
LINK: Australian My Career Portal
If you are in the UK they are called Vocational Colleges and you can find a list of the courses here:
LINK: Find Courses UK Website
University
Universities across the world are starting to include more online teaching requirements into their bachelor level courses. Whether you do a Bachelor of Education and then major in teaching online or do a specialised degree that is for teaching online only there are many paths you can take.
If you have a Bachelor in any specialisation you can also add a 1 or 2 year post graduate qualification on top of that degree that will certify you to teach in schools. Depending on what you are trying to teach online through university study may not be required.
If you are teaching in Kindergarten to Grade 12 (K-12) then you will need to have a bachelor in most cases. If you are just sharing your knowledge on a topic online whether you charge people or not then you won’t need a degree.
As an example here is an article on how to become a teacher in the USA:
ARTICLE: How to Become a Licensed or Certified Teacher
Finding a Mentor
If you prefer working with someone that has experience in the field and is able to focus their attention on your specific skills you need to develop you might want to consider finding a mentor. Below I have listed three of the most popular methods you can use to look for a suitable online teaching mentor.
Industry Websites
There are plenty of websites that have experts in education. Working with a mentor allows you to bypass the most frequent mistakes and develop your skills faster. There are heaps of teaching associations you can join where you can talk with people and find a mentor that you get along with.
Here are the associations in the US:
LINK: American Teachers Associations
Here is a link to the UK Teachers associations:
LINK: UK Teachers Associations
If you are based in another country just do a search for “Teachers Associations <Country Name>” to find the ones in your country.
LinkedIn Groups
LinkedIn is one of the most popular platforms that represent professionals from different areas all together. It is designed to allow professionals to post an online resume and talk with other professionals and businesses. This social platform has more than around a billion members that are constantly active.
You can seek guidance from educators that have plenty of experience in working with students online by simply reaching out and asking if they mind meeting for coffee, having a webex or providing some guidance in the chat on the platform. One of the advantages of this platform is that you can see potential mentors’ experience (online courses they are teaching, main topic, institutions they have worked with, etc.).
Some groups you could join to teach online are:
Teaching Online
https://www.linkedin.com/groups/2794385/
Online Professionals: Teaching College Online and Hybrid
https://www.linkedin.com/groups/1631797/
Online Teaching
https://www.linkedin.com/groups/2082323/
Online Learning Experts
https://www.linkedin.com/groups/3770398/
Facebook Groups
There are plenty of groups that represent both experts and newbies in education. You can join as many groups as you want to. Seeking guidance on Facebook groups is a great idea because you can reach out to educators from all around the world. These are more social discussions than compared to LinkedIn that is more formal and work driven in nature.
Engage Online
To develop your skills you can engage in discussions with other educators or experts. This way you will be able to see and understand another point of view. Teachers can share their personal experiences and come up with tips and advice for new educators.
Forums
You can engage in discussions with teachers on different online forums. There you can ask and answer questions as well as read others’ opinions on certain topics. Two of the most popular online forums you can join are:
Online Chats
Live online chats are a great way to have discussions in real time and get answers to questions that you ask straight away. These are more commonly hosted on social media now but there are still some out there if you do a search.
Web Conferences
It is a great idea to share your experiences with other teachers using web conference tools. This type of engagement can come in a variety of ways (webinar, live chat, one-on-one call, etc.). You can arrange a live conference with educators that are willing to spend some time chatting with other teachers.
There are a lot of Web Conferences from major vendors, industry groups and government departments you can join to keep yourself up to date.
Social Media
As mentioned before you should take advantage of popular social media platforms. This way you will be able to connect with other teachers. You can discuss different aspects of online teaching with educators that are more experienced in this domain. You can also ask for guidance on issues you are having trouble with.
The most popular social media platforms are:
The age groups of people you are trying to reach and whether you are wanting to have a social discussion or a more formal work related discussion will dictate the platform you use.
Soft Skills
Soft skills are generally related to skills required to work with others in the workplace. These are like communications, emotional quotient, social skills and other skills required. When teaching these are related to managing classes online and how you relate to students and how they relate to each other.
For more information on Soft Skills check out this article:
LINK: Soft Skills On Wikipedia
The most commonly used soft skills of teachers are:
- Communicating Skills
- Presentation Skills
- Classroom Management
- Dispute Resolution
Let’s discuss some of them to find out why they are so important for online teachers.
Communication Skills
For any teacher, communication skills are one of the most important ones you can have. The ability to take complex topics and make them easy to understand to your students and verify understanding are pretty much the job. If you are teaching formally for schools, private or non-profit businesses, Vocation Education and Training (VET) or for Universities you will have to have these skills formalised through training.
If you are teaching a course on Youtube, Udemy or Skillshare then you won’t have to have formalised skills or qualifications just know the topic you are trying to teach. We all need to brush up and be reminded from time to time to work on our assumptions and basic communications skills when teaching.
COURSES: Communication Skills Courses
Presentation Skills
As well as being an effective communicator you also need to think about your presentation skills. In a physical classroom this means how you dress, how you act, the classroom setup itself and the equipment you use.
When you are teaching online it is not just how you look but also the background of your videos and background sounds. I am trying to avoid the technical aspects like how you edit your content and stick to how you present yourself and the care you take in making sure everything is ready for students and easy to use. We will talk about the presentation and professionalism on the technical side later.
COURSES: Presentation Skills Courses
Classroom Management
This one whether you are teaching in a classroom or online is much the same. The students take their cue from you and how you act. How do you encourage student engagement and how do you get the students to feel part of the class. How do you set boundaries for students with acceptable behavior?
Here is a course that may be of interest to you:
COURSE: Teaching Character and Creating Positive Classrooms
Here are some tips for running your first online class:
LINK: 15 Practical Tips for Teaching your First Online Class
Dispute Resolution
When you are running your online class what do you do when you have conflicts? How do you handle these disputes and how do you do it without embarrassing your students? This is exactly what you need to think about.
In over 20 years teaching and thousands of weekly courses I have never had to ask someone to leave a class either teaching online or in the classroom. Most of my teaching is to adults but we all know they can act like children now and then.
COURSES: Conflict Resolution
Technical Skills
These skills are the ones you will need to operate the technologies to run your online classrooms including creating your training content and the administration of your training portal that you will need to do.
The most important technical competencies are:
- Instructional Design
- Web Development (Optional but a little knowledge is handy)
- Content Development
- Assessment Tools
- 1 on 1 Online Tutoring
- Group Online Conferencing
Let’s find out what is the real importance of these skills and why you should invest effort in developing them.
Instructional Design
This is the process of designing your material with a certain pedagogy and structure that will suit your learners whether they be K-12 or Adults. We have all seen poorly designed training that is not logical in order or presents topics in a way that builds on previous learning. If you have never done a course on Instructional Design there are some below you can do for free with Coursera.
COURSES: Instructional Design Courses
Basic Web Development
Ok don’t get scared with this topic as you are not being asked to become a web developer. This is more about understanding some of the basics of HTML and CSS so you can tweak how your training is presented on your training website. Whether you are using a custom website or a Content Management System (CMS) or a Learning Management System (LMS) these are handy skills to have.
Two examples may be that your eLearning bundling software does something silly with your HTML start page for your course and you just need to fix how it looks with a little HTML or CSS. You may have put a new block in using your LMS and need to change something to a custom CSS format.
If you just want to learn some of the basics of HTML and CSS I would recommend the following tutorials on W3Schools website.
TUTORIALS: Simple Tutorials on HTML and CSS
If you want some University level subjects then check out the ones below on Coursera.
UNIVERSITY COURSES: Basic Web Development Courses
And finally if you want a real community and be a full stack web developer you can look at the Free Code Camp website below. They have facebook groups set up for most towns in the world and a live chat you can learn from peers as you go.
FULL STACK WEB DEVELOPER: Free Code Camp
Content Development
Whether you are teaching live online or through eLearning you will need to understand the content types you can use to support your live online training or to create your eLearning. These generally revolve around using an LMS or eLearning packaging software package.
However if you really wanted to you could develop them from scratch with web development skills while I would not recommend it. Generally due to the higher technical skills required and the time it will take you. I won’t link to any courses here as we will be talking about them in the Software Product Training section below.
Here is an article on all the types of eLearning Content you can create online.
ARTICLE: The Ultimate Guide to eLearning Content Types
Assessment Tools
Just like a normal classroom you can assess your students in all the normal ways with formative and summative assessments. There are heaps of other more creative ways you can assess students online as well. Here are a couple of articles that will show you some of these more creative ways to assess online students.
ARTICLE: What are the assessment methods in online learning? 14 Creative Ways
ARTICLE: 27 Interactive Assignment Ideas For Online Students
1 on 1 Online Tutoring
When you are delivering 1 on 1 tutoring online there are many ways you can do this depending on the subjects you are teaching. You can start with a basic Video Chat with Whatsapp, Messenger or WeChat for instance. Then move to remote desktop tools if you are wanting to provide direct tutoring with software on their actual computer.
The most popular online remote desktop software at the moment is Teamviewer and it has audio and live chat features.
Group Online Conferencing
This is generally where you are using Web Conferencing to deliver a lecture style training session to a group of students. Becoming comfortable with how to use tools like Zoom or Webex will be valuable to you if you are teaching online.
If you don’t understand how to teach online then it would be wise to check out this article.
ARTICLE: How Can I Teach Online?
Software Product Training
If you are planning on working with certain software tools then you should invest a fair amount of effort into learning how to properly use it. Below you will find some examples of applications that are worth learning.
Articulate Storyline
Articulate Storyline (3 and 360) is an authoring tool that enables teachers to create and package eLearning training content. It features useful functions that make the whole creation process easier. If you want to improve your knowledge about this tool I strongly suggest taking a look at the Training section on the official website. You will also find some cheap courses on Udemy as well.
Madcap Flare
MadCap Flare is a tool designed for advanced topic-based authoring, single-source publishing, and content management. It allows educators to create, edit, and manage training content for text based training materials like training manuals and online help style content.
To learn more about how to use this application I recommend taking a look at the Training section on the MadCap website.
LMS (Moodle)
If you are planning on using a learning management system to manage your courses. Then you should definitely spend a fair amount of time improving your knowledge on how to use all the available functions.
You can learn more about how to use Moodle LMS by accessing the appropriate Learn section on the official website.
Windows
This is the most basic software you need to be capable of using. There are heaps of courses and materials you can take advantage of if you are planning on developing your Windows skills. For example, the Learning section of the Microsoft website contains plenty of helpful resources. If you are not comfortable with your current skills take a brush up course.
Keeping Current
It can be quite a job keeping current when you are teaching online as well as being the expert in a field or at least knowing more than your students. Throughout this article I have provided you with many ways to do just that. Whether it is through social media, vendor web conferences or free online courses there are heaps of options available.
So what do I do to keep current? In 30 mins of my dead time somewhere in the week I drill into the information on the web around a new concept or topic I don’t know a lot about. The other thing I do is reserve 1 night a week at home to do something to better myself.
We all have constraints on our time but if your major source of income is not worth a few hours 1 night a week then you will never progress in life or may even lose your job for not staying current. This is the best way to future proof your career.