How to keep staff motivated while teaching online
“There is a huge difference between traditional classroom teaching and online teaching”
Teachers need to be motivated, especially if they are working with online students, writes Cudy Technologies founder Alexander Lim. They need to have a passion for teaching, and should have a good understanding of the subject matter they are teaching.
Keep your teachers engaged
It is important to keep your teachers engaged and motivated when teaching online. Keep them up-to-date with current affairs so that they can relate to the subject matter and engage with their students.
Make sure you give them enough freedom in terms of designing their course, and selecting resources and materials for teaching.
It is important that you give them all the tools needed to make them feel like they are really teaching their own course. This will help them stay motivated as well as help keep your students engaged in learning the subject matter.
Let your teachers be creative
You can let your teachers be creative by letting them create activities which will help the students practice what they have learnt in class or during lessons outside of class time.
For example, if you are having an English class then you can let your teacher design a competition between two groups or two members from each group in which they will need to come up with creative slogans or advertisements on a particular topic which has been taught during class time or outside of class time by using what they have learnt from the lesson that day.
If you don’t give teachers freedom in terms of creating their own classes then it is likely that their classes will not be engaging enough for the students who will eventually lose interest in attending classes regularly or completing their assignments on time.
It is important that both you and your teachers understand that an online classroom cannot work if there is no mutual trust between teacher and student, and teacher and the school management team.
Trust allows both parties involved to relax knowing that there is someone else who can take over should anything go wrong, which in turn motivates everyone involved because it means that there are no boundaries when it comes to trying new things.
Let your teachers be creative in their teaching methods online
Just like in real classrooms, teachers online should be allowed to be creative in their teaching methods. There are many teaching methods available for online teachers, but most of them have been designed by traditional classroom teachers who have no experience of teaching online.
They usually design these activities based on what they think will work best for their students and this is usually wrong because they don’t understand how students think or behave when they are not physically present in the classroom.
Don’t forget that there is a huge difference between traditional classroom teaching and online teaching.
Get your teachers involved in all activities at school
If you want to keep your teachers motivated then it is important that you get them involved in all activities at school (online and offline).
For example, if there is a social event coming up then you should get them involved by asking them to host it or organize it for you.
By doing this, you are showing respect towards your teachers and this will motivate them because they will feel valued as part of the team at school rather than just being viewed as employees who come into work every day and leave after finishing their daily tasks at hand without any appreciation for what they do every day for the benefit of the organization.
Offer incentives to your teachers
You can offer incentives to your teachers by giving them a small percentage of the profits made from students who are enrolled in their classes, because this will help motivate them to teach more and give better lessons and assignments which will in turn benefit the school management team and bring more profits to the organization.
You can also offer them small rewards such as tickets for theme parks, restaurants or shopping centers because this will motivate them to work harder.
About the Author: Alexander Lim is the founder edtech startup Cudy Technologies, which helps teachers teach better and students learn better using videos and interactive activities. You can follow him on Medium.
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