Soft skills – to be an effective tutor

 You all know that our world is not the same anymore.  Tutors are not next to the learners anymore.  And you need to develop soft skills to be an effective tutor and to keep you relevant.

Developing soft skills is a process because as tutors you must first engage in self-reflection and you should know which soft skill is to be developed.

Let’s explore how to develop the required skills in the 5 steps :

1. To develop a learning mindset
2. To engage in self-reflection
3. To Improve knowledge and understanding
4. To Find the best online training course
5. To Practice for perfection

1. To develop a learning mindset:

As tutor you must always be prepared to learn something new and you must understand that it will improve your performance.  Soft skills like resilience, emotional intelligence are few skill that can make you more effective.  You need to manage yourself in the ever-changing workplace.  So it is essential to have a mindset to learning new things.

2. To engage in self-reflection

You might not know how to improve or develop the skills that are required.  So, before you start, it is essential to figure out which skill is the most needed.  You can always reflect on the skills that you are good at and with the combination of self-assessment you can identify the gaps.

3. To Improve knowledge and understanding

Once your realize that you are not social, communicative or positive, with proper guidance you can understand the importance of the skill that are required.

Some can be tech-savvy, experience or new, for any to work on a new way may be difficult. So having an online training session will be perfect to fill the gaps and develop the skills required.

4. To Find the best online training course

In recent days many online training courses have emerged.  When you are clear with what is skill you need to develop you can go for any online skill training courses. eLearning is one of the best option for developing the skills.

In my next blog I  will be elaborating on the available online platforms and how to select the best online course.

5. To Practice for perfection

Once you have got the online coaching, practice, is how you can develop the skill. After all, it would be pointless unless you keep practicing it for more perfection. The best part in online coaching is that you can have the content and resource with you which can be verified whenever it is needed.

Once  you are on track towards the development of the skill, you need to have a periodic analysis them. And at the same time, you should be well on the ways towards possessing the next set of skills that might be required for the future. By taking advantage of the openness of online learning we need to keep improving our skills.

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elearning the Future of Education

 eLearning was progressing at a good speed,  even before the hit of pandemic. With closure of  schools and colleges, as led to extensive growth in eLearning industry.  Teachers, professors and students, started themselves working in a completely new circumstances. As per the world’s most highly valued edutech company, Indian BYJU, experienced a 60% increase in new students using its solution within just a week of making it free.  Such online learning services have helped millions of school children suddenly transfer to remote learning.

According to a new study by Global Market Insights, the eLearning market is set to reach $375 billion by 2026. Which means there are huge opportunities and growth in eLearning business. 

In this blog, we are going to see the Top 5 eLearning trends that will be future of Education in 2020.  

1. Micro planning the lessons 

Micro planning is very much required for the new generation learners, who are with shorter attention spans. In order to help students absorb the knowledge in an efficient way, it’s essential that information is provided at a rate that matches their ability to focus. This will improve learning transfer and engagement, as well as increase development speed.

2. Smart board presentations 

The smart board are highly engaging and interactive for both teachers and students. The digital whiteboards have come across many changes and are still helping the students in the classroom to stay with the advanced technology. Smart board is a versatile tool integrated to customized learning conditions for students. Audio, Videos and Images together engage the students who have different learning styles. Almost all the schools including Govt. schools have started implementing this tool and technique. 

3. Artificial Intelligence Tutors 

The students can have Personalized AI tutors to help them in their online training.  These type of personalized tutors will be available and are accessible at any time on any device to the students. The integration of smooth interaction between AI and teachers improves the overall online training experience. It helps to evaluate the student’s competencies, to find out their weak areas and the required materials to focus on those areas. AI will become popular in the coming future in all levels of education because of its personalized and adaptive nature. 

4.Augmented and Virtual Reality

AR and VR presents realistic scenario for the students. The excited learning environment increases the retentions rate of the students attention span than the traditional classroom method. VR helps students to gain hands on experience and instant application of knowledge helps to achieve their full potential.  Most learners prefers to have the information though displays and reality than reading. 

5.Adaptive Learning

Adaptive learning also know as personalized learning, set personalized resources and instruction for every student.  It tests the current level of students.  It allows teachers to understand how best their students learn and  teachers can then personalize a student’s learning based on that data. Then, based on which the system guides the students to study the customized curriculum at their own pace. The student need not study the concepts which they have already mastered, not do they need to fall behind. Eventually, tutors can use these data to predict student behavior to design curriculum, and map learning interventions.

Conclusion

It is very much evident that the trends and skills are continually shifting towards eLearning industry for the future, and is expanding at a substantial rate.  I hope this blog is a great source of help to enable you to take decision of learning strategies and programs to the next level and gain overall performance and success in Learning and Development..

Let us know in the comments section below! What other eLearning trends or skills do you expect in the industry in the coming year?

 

Top 5 online tools for effective virtual teaching

 The sudden change to remote teaching has left many teachers and students with various challenges. Many of you may be searching to find the proper tools to conduct effective online teaching classes.

I have listed a few tools that you can use to enhance your experience with teaching online, or remote teaching as popularly referred to these days. You can go through the list and select the ideal online teaching tools for your remote teaching goals.

1. Remote communicating platform

From in-person teaching to online teaching has made communicating with students and teachers easier and more affordable than ever. Whether you connect using software, a mobile app or social media, here are few collaboration tools to consider.

Zoom :

This is an easy-to-use desktop platform and app that allows you to schedule, launch, and record virtual meetings with your team. These meetings can be held remotely from a computer or smartphone.

MS Teams :

This allows you to download apps like Excel, Outlook, Word, and PowerPoint to your computer or mobile device. Like G Suite, you also can use this general suite of tools to manage, share, store, and edit documents in team folders.

Skype :

Many of you would have already used Skype. Along with allowing you to host free small virtual meetings, Skype also enables you to create group chats. If you want to use the paid version of Skype, you can also have meetings with groups or make international voice calls.

Google Meet :

A budget-friendly platform that allows you to go online with integrated tools like Google Docs, Google Sheets, and Google Slide, and all the resources can be easily stored in Google Drive .

WebEx :

It provides personalized video meeting rooms where users can to host and join meetings. People can use WebEx for team collaboration, webinars, training and customer support.

These are few popular video conferencing platform that lets you virtually meet other people across various hardware platforms like desktops, laptops, and mobile phones.

2. Learning management systems

In short LMS, is a web-based medium used to deliver educational courses, resources, etc. It gives the educator, access to track, monitor, and assign the materials to the students. Some LMS also provides inbuilt contents of various departments that are ready to use, here are few LMS to consider

Google Classroom :

Google Classroom is a cloud-based Learning Management System, useful for K-12 and higher education teachers and students. G suite and classroom are free for educational institutes. Teachers can create assignments, activities, handouts and post it in the classroom. These resources can be viewed by teachers, students, and other co-teachers. .

Canvas :

Canvas is an easy to use and for designing, Canva allows you to create team accounts where you can share design templates and assets with your colleagues remotely. This ensures you’re able to access and edit any design files or brand imagery you might need while working from home.

Blackboard :

Blackboard learn is used as a platform for students to send and receive school work. This program is operated by teachers as a web-based user software device to connect them to their students. It is incredibly important now due to the current world events regarding distancing.

Schoology :

Schoology LMS is created in collaboration with a blended learning environment for K-12 schools and higher educational institutions. It offers features such as creating, managing academic content, online curriculum, lesson planning, classroom management through attendance records and grading, online tests, quizzes, and assessment of student understanding.

Moodle :

Moodle is also one of the best education-based LMS applications. The LMS is fully customizable and extensible to perfectly fit your needs. The thousands of community-developed plugins will also allow you to add new functionalities.

3. Online whiteboard tools

There are few online whiteboard tools which can be used to represent diagrams, charts, slides, mind maps, graphs etc..

Google Jamboard – online virtual whiteboard
Google slides – a presentation tool
Mindmeister – mind mapping tool
Creately – to represent as diagrams and charts
Twiddla – an online virtual whiteboard

4. Interactive, Quiz and Assessment tools

Online tool which allows you to create forms, surveys and quizzes. You can also create, edit and share the forms, quizzes and surveys to other people. Educators can use these tools to assess your students in the class.

Answer Garden – Word cloud generator
JoeZoo – Google add-on for summative and formative assessment
Google Forms – Quiz questions with data exported to a Google Sheet
Kahoot – Quiz-style student-response game
Quizizz – Polls and quizzes

5. Educational online gaming sites

To make the education more interactive and joyful, you can find many games or activities for kids to use and to apply what they have learned in different subject areas like Math, Science, and Social Studies.Some useful gaming sites are –

Funbrain – Education Science, Math, skill development and problem solving
Kids.nationalgeographic – Educational animal facts and pictures
ABC Ya – Educational games for preK-5th grade students
Mangahigh – Educational math games
PhET Simulations – Science simulations

Visit the site through the respective links to explore the tools and find out which are more adaptive and are usable. If you know any other tools that are more user friendly and reliable you can mention it in the comments. You can also give your feedback and suggestions about this blog in the comment section to improvise, if any.

A detailed review for any particular tool will be given, if you want me do so.