As an online tutor, you’ll have the opportunity to connect with hundreds of students from around the world. While this may seem like an incredible opportunity, it can also be a daunting task trying to figure out how to effectively teach online writing to students. In order to be able to tutor your online writing center, you’ll need to approach the subject matter in a certain way and use your skills and knowledge to help guide your student’s learning. Let’s take a look at three different approaches.
The Elements Approach
If you teach a class on grammar or style, you may be used to using the teaching of a piece of paper as a guide to help your students learn. With online writing, this method won’t work as well because you can’t see the students’ work or provide immediate feedback. One way around this is to use an evaluation tool with which the students can provide feedback. This will help you gauge their understanding of what you’re teaching and allow you to adjust your approach accordingly. You may also choose to use an elements approach, meaning you’ll cover certain combinations of grammar and spelling that may come up frequently in written communication. Using this approach, you’ll be able to target specific areas of improvement for your students.
The Visual Approach
In a similar way to how TV changed the way people watch movies and TV shows, so too has technology changed the way people learn. Videos and images provide an incredible visual aids which can enhance any learning experience. If you’re teaching technical writing, you may choose to use images and diagrams to illustrate your points. By doing this, you’ll be able to engage your students more effectively because they’ll be able to see and understand the information you’re providing them with more easily. In terms of grammar and style, teaching with visuals can be an incredible way to enhance your students’ learning experience. You may choose to create an entire lesson plan using only images and videos.
The Traditional Approach
Finally, there’s the tried and tested method of simply following a lecture and then testing your students’ knowledge at the end. This can still be an effective way to teach, provided you know how to make the most of it. With a traditional approach, you’ll use lectures to cover the basic principles of the subject matter before moving on to provide your students with examples of good and bad writing. This way, you can ensure they’ve grasped the key points of the material and be able to answer questions efficiently and accurately. This may not be the most exciting method, but it has served authors well for centuries.
Choosing the right approach to teach your online writing center is an important decision. Once you’ve decided on the approach you’ll use, you can begin to lay out a plan for how you’ll go about teaching it. This may mean creating a series of lessons or using content from elsewhere to build your course. Ultimately, it’s up to you and what makes the most sense for your students.