5 Skills You Need To Become a Good Online Teacher

Discover the essential skills to maximize your students’ online learning experience

In a world in which thousands of things are constantly competing for our attention, it’s understandable that those who take on the incredible profession of teaching may feel particularly challenged.

Online teachers especially are competing for attention in a space where students can easily access entertainment and information of all kinds which, paired with our continual shifting of curiosities, can lead us to jump from one topic to another.

But the good news is it is possible to increase concentration and maintain focus with the right creative resources and by building up authentic connections.

Whether you’re a teacher or thinking about entering the honorable world of teaching, here we celebrate World Teachers' Day (October 5) by sharing some essential skills and top tips to become a good teacher, especially when working online, according to Domestika experts.

1. Use the COOL method to your present ideas

Being a good communicator means knowing yourself and also knowing your audience (in this case the students), says Kyoko Takeyama (@kyokotakeyama). A speaker, instructor and communication coach, Kyoko has worked for clients including the University of Barcelona and the IESE Business School. She explains that when you are curious about other people, that’s when you can really connect and add impact to the information you’re presenting.

This curiosity can be summed up in a question that guides your lessons each day: what benefits will what I am teaching bring to my students? Remembering the purpose or the why throughout a course or workshop will help you keep your students connected to their mission.

With this goal in mind, Kyoko created the “COOL” method to incorporate key elements that make any speech a success: 'C' ontext, 'O' bstacle, 'O' utcome and 'L' ife After. The method is based on the following principles:

- Add contextual information, for example, by relating what you’re teaching to a story in the news. These extra details make it easier for people to understand and follow what you’re saying.

- Outline challenges and questions that this new knowledge presents. By identifying this, we can work out what to do next.

- Think about the benefits of the new knowledge; what can we do, what issues can we solve?

- Explain how a person’s skills (and life) will improve once they have taken on the information.

Applying the COOL method should not be limited to presentations or welcome speeches, but rather incorporated throughout each lesson. If you are interested in finding out more, check out Kyoko’s course, Communicate with Confidence: Learn to Give Powerful Speeches.

2. Learn to create visual impact

In the educational universe, is a picture also worth a thousand words? So says Katya Kovalenko (@katyakovalenko), a specialist in creating graphic visualizations that help convey information through visual impact. In a society increasingly used to reading and interpreting images, she advocates that any professional who needs to communicate effectively should learn the codes to build a visual language.

The reasons are simple:

- Our communication is increasingly global. We no longer only interact with people from our own cultures who speak the same language; our horizons are increasingly broad and we need to speak a common language to streamline processes.

- Visual content can help save time and lengthy explanations by making our communication more direct.

- Good visual content can replace words, illustrate them, and even deepen their meaning.

- Visuals can improve group comprehension; when we communicate using words only each listener may form a totally different mental image.

- Images can help make processes easier to follow.

According to Katya, the ability to think conceptually and translate those concepts into images is a crucial skill for those who want to communicate effectively with as many people as possible.

In her course Graphic Visualization: Telling Complex Stories through Simple Images you can delve into these ideas theoretically and practically.

3. Project (and protect!) your voice

Online and offline, our voice is the main instrument with which we communicate. It is an essential tool for teachers, but we don’t always understand it in depth or know how to get the most out of it.

Voice training is a great habit to get into if you want to preserve the health of your vocal cords and maintain a more comfortable way of communicating professionally. The more vocal power and stamina you develop, the more you will be able to express nuance, deepen your ideas and participate in exchanges without worrying about the repercussions the next day.

Sergio Zamora (@sergiozamorasola), one of the main dubbing actors in Spain and the voice of some of the most recognized actors in American cinema, also trains professionals facing vocal challenges. These professionals must overcome issues like fatigue, dysphonia, and often even more severe problems that require additional treatments, such as vocal cord nodules caused by misuse of the voice.

Before you turn on your camera to give your next online lesson or record your new course, take a look at the tutorial below where Sergio recommends five practical exercises to warm up your voice. If you want to delve deeper into these exercises, sign up for his course Introduction to Voice-Over Narration for more professional tips.

4. Integrate storytelling techniques

Storytelling might feel like a skill meant for entertainment or marketing, but it can be useful for much more than that. In education, storytelling helps students understand complex topics. It is much easier to teach concepts through stories with characters, circumstances, and places that we can identify with than to learn abstract concepts.

Analyzing success stories through particular examples, or complex social phenomena through personal stories is much more illustrative, emotional, and effective than simply providing theory. The real reason for its effectiveness is that when we learn to tell stories we are able to connect emotionally with those listening to us, and not only on an intellectual level.

This theory is backed up by Gabriel García de Oro (@gabrielgarciaoro), a professional storyteller, Executive Creative Director & Strategy Advisor at Ogilvy Barcelona, and also a certified coach in the International Coaching Federation.

Gabriel says that almost all concepts, no matter how difficult, can be translated into a good story that sets out details more clearly. He explains all this (and more) in his course Storytelling Techniques for Conveying a Message.

5. Explore tools from the entertainment world

It’s true that learning can be hard, which means it’s difficult to make lessons entertaining all the time. But it’s proven that the more fun a class is, the more your students will engage.

If you are a teacher who has launched into the production of your own online courses (i.e., with material that will be recorded for reference at any time), and if you teach subjects related to the arts and humanities, you may be interested in exploring the structure for crafting an engaging narrative.

Julio Rojas (@juliowriter) is a screenwriter and writer who won the Goya Prize in 2012. He understands the rhetorical elements that grab our attention and help us stay focused on a task for hours at a time. Julio has developed a method he calls the “Script Folder" to help you understand how the topics of your subject or specialty can be translated into compelling stories. Using this method, you can customize the structure of a classic story and shape your educational content.

Learn more from Julio in his Script Writing for Movies and Television course.

The universe of online education is full of resources and tools to help you connect and share your knowledge. The educational revolution has begun!

English version by @amyvsnelling.

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