Your first irruption into the online knowledge business can be exciting and yet challenging at the same time.
You will likely be exploring the many ways to share, teach and guide online…. And there are many opportunities. Let’s start with the HOW first… not tech-wise, I’m talking about your style of teaching.
If you’ve learnt online, then your half way there… but what if you haven’t learnt online before? In this article we will go through the basics of teaching online; styles of teaching, and who you are teaching.
You will likely be exploring the many ways to share, teach and guide online…. And there are many opportunities. Let’s start with the HOW first… not tech-wise, I’m talking about your style of teaching.
If you’ve learnt online, then your half way there… but what if you haven’t learnt online before? In this article we will go through the basics of teaching online; styles of teaching, and who you are teaching.
If you are looking to teach online, then there is a possibility you have already learnt online.
Experiencing learning online obviously gives us an idea how our participants will learn from us. But have you thought about how you will teach your content, share it so it sticks, and therefore build a community of followers who will want to continue learning more from you?
Ok I might be getting ahead, so let us start with the basics. The essential part of teaching online is having the experience of learning online at least. Here are some questions to ask yourself;
- When you attended a webinar, have you been involved in the chat, or Q&A after?
- Have you ever followed a sequence of learnings online such as via email, or an online course?
- Did you ever get involved with a group chat about your learnings, discussed outcomes?
- Where you ever invited to fill in a survey or quiz to then have a result, in form of a download, an interview or other returned to you?
By reviewing how you have interacted and possibly learnt online, then you can gauge the critical differences between learning and teaching.
The successful online knowledge business incorporates these 3 fundamentals:
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Confidence in your topic – OF COURSE!
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Understanding of the different teaching styles to ensure you are delivering a teachable business.
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Understanding of your students goals and needs.
First let’s look at you the teacher
MIDSET
You may have a certain mindset when it comes to teaching. We are likely from a generation where we were taught face to face, however the online environment is very different. A certain mindset is required to help us with our comfort and confidence levels.
Yes there are a number of elements to help us deliver online, but we are looking at the fundamentals of teaching and bringing them into the world of online. Teaching will require us to not only understand the tech behind teaching online, as this helps us decide how we deliver our content, however we need to understand teaching principles and the student too. You don’t need to go through a full 4 year course to become a teacher, but if you at least have an understanding of the basics you can move into this world with much more stability. If we have the right mindset when entering online teaching, we can present as confidently and competently.
Learn what you can about teaching online if you can. I do offer courses in Passion to Profession that dive into this further, however for now I want to share with you the basic fundamentals, and give you some things to think about and get you moving.
WHAT WILL BE YOUR Involvement?
First things first though……
When preparing your content you will likely think of how you will deliver it, but what about the pace? What about the methods of asynchronous or synchronous? Will you provide one to one, onto to many or none to many? Each of these deliveries are not teaching styles, they are only narrowing down your involvement.. and each effects the teaching style you need to offer based on the result your student is looking to achieve.
PACE
When we learn, there is usually a timing factor introduced. When I mention this I mean pace. If learning via a webinar, then likely it were given a manual or some content to read first to help you set yourself up before the webinar began. Give some perspective on what will be discussed etc.. help you get into a certain mindset.
Let’s say though you might have learnt via a course, or challenge, then it is very likely you were given access to the Intro, or Day 1, but future access was not given until you completed the prior teachings. This is what we call “Drip feeding” in the elearning industry.
There is a perfect reason behind pacing and I explain this more in my courses on Passion to Profession. To keep it simple though, the reason we pace our teachings mostly falls down to perception. Perception is part of pacing. It’s crucial to consider the speed at which you plan to deliver your content as it correlates with student participation.
If you pace your deliverables too slow, then of course your participants may become bored, otherwise if you proceed too fast then you may loose them, not giving your students the chance to grasp what’s being taught.
ASYNCHRONOUS OR SYNCHRONOUS?
This basically means how involved will you be with teaching.
Asynchronous is pure online learning. This is when the learner interacts with the content them self without a real time teacher or instructor. What we also call as none to many.
Synchronous is when the learner is taught real time with a two way interaction, this could be one to one, one to many.
So do think about how involved you will be in delivering your content and teachings. Will you provide a library of content, or a course of lessons to be taken at their own pace. There are benefits and certainly some negatives with none to many. However you can always balance this by introducing community interaction and some instructor involvement via webinars for example.
The reason I say this is because of the true value paying participants find in interaction when they are learning online. Yes self pace is ideal for some, but I can certainly tell you that when we have a question to ask, where do many of us go?… We go to a community, a forum to try get an answer. So having a community, or your personal involvement in your online business help build trust, helping your members know they have someone and somewhere to turn to when in need.
The last thing you want is your members having the potential to misunderstand your content and not have an outlet to engage with to find an answer.
Lets look further into this though….. your students may feel less personally involved without social interaction, so be mindful of this when setting up your available channels. Remember your aim and this will hopefully shine a light on which direction you should take when setting up your knowledge business online.
YOUR LEARNER
Very likely you will be setting up your knowledge based business to teach adults. This principle is called andragogy. This is basically the art of helping adults learn and in this case… online.
When delivering a knowledge based business we are looking to solve their problem. But we also need to make sure whatever we are teaching is relevant to their needs, and helps them achieve their goal.
When venturing down the teaching path, especially with adult students ensuring we maintain respect and show our students they are capable learners is paramount to a successful result. Your students need to see that whilst being encouraged to move at a pace, and be involved, they also have choice and can set their own learning goals.
Your learner is;
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Has choice, they are self motivated
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They are independent
They can manage themselves
To create a successful and effective knowledge based business, whilst you may be the expert in your area, be mindful of how you will deliver your content. Whether you plan on delivering; via readings, presentations, and discussions, the way in which you deliver these will be up to your comfort level and of course how your participants will learn best.
IN SUMMARY
You will always have a successful knowledge based business if you listen to your learners and involve them. Learning online doesn’t have to be singular, or someone simply alone at their desk reading screen after screen of words. In this day and age, we are lucky to be able to venture online and share our passions. Teaching our passions and sharing our experiences with others has never been so exciting. There are many ways to do so and we are lucky to have access to so many technologies that allow us to do so.
Just remember the true goal when teaching online….. you’re there for others to learn from you, so as long as you always have them in mind, you’ll be a true teacher.
It never has to be hard to do. , See you next time!
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Wow, there’s a lot of content to unpack in this article and a lot to consider when approaching online instruction. Successful online educators must strategically decide on the methods being used to impart this knowledge.