What I learned about teaching in online environments

It is seriously important to encourage collaborative learning in the virtual environment. It is vital that online students work together and effectively to overcome challenges together. We as teachers should underline and highlight the importance of collaborative work in the online learning environment, not just only completing the learning tasks but understanding each other, developing better communication skills, and also what to do and how to act when faced with challenges are crucially important aspects of it.

The concern for collaborative work would be often having students in different parts of the country or even different parts of the world that leads to living in different time zone, this also can be overcome by effective communication, creating schedules, better planning, and using digital platforms and tools more effectively. For instance, the students can create Google docs and collaborate on topics, add comments on each other pieces and inform on the progress they made. Zoom or Skype calls also allow them to communicate and keep in touch in times where collaborative work and real-time feedbacks are required. In my experience, it is very important to use the online tools effectively and learn new tools when needed and as required to achieve the level of confidence in online learning. The tools really can make a significant difference and create fun for learners also sharing and using important features of the tool or even new tools during lessons to encourage learners to use it also works absolutely great.

Active learning is also another important piece of online learning that learners engage in activities by themselves, do research and come up with new ideas while the teacher stays in the background actively guide the individual when needed and where required, it is rather than being a partner with the teacher than doing collaborative work together, the difference would be teacher guide the learners to find the right path and allow them to lead in their own learning process. The input of the teacher is more likely to be constructive and motivating than simply showing the answers. The teacher has to have an effective feedback mechanism in place to check-in learners' progress and their understandings of the topic taught.

The essential ingredient of online learning is giving regular feedback to learners about their progress which then would motivate and encourage learners to achieve their target. It also enables learners to see their current status and how much effort they need to put in more to come to the desired point and achieve learning objectives at certain timescales. This can also be given by using online tools, visually reflecting the data month by month and topic by topic to create interest and sustain the learning level needed from each student.