Increase your productivity and help students learn the most with this essential online teaching checklist!

Due to the pandemic, many teachers have been forced to deliver their courses online. Online classes may seem easier and less time-consuming than regular classes, but much planning and hard work go into them. Online teachers have a lot to prepare and double-check before their virtual classes begin. In this blog post, we’ve put together an online teaching checklist to help you get ready for your next class!

Online teaching checklist before your next virtual class

Create the course outline 

Before scheduling the class, as a teacher, you have to create an outline of what the students will learn. If you want students also to prepare, you can send them the content outline too. Before your class, make sure you have the outline handy so that you can keep track.

After this step, you can schedule the class and share the link. 

Send reminders

One day before the class is scheduled, send your students a reminder email with the time and date. Send another one an hour before the class starts. It could be in the form of texts also. 

Set reminders for yourself as well, even if you are home the whole day. Online teaching sessions can be easily forgotten. Allow yourself plenty of time to prepare for the course by setting a reminder at least a couple of hours before starting class.

Prepare classes in advance

If you use ManyCam in your online class, you can add your resources as video presets and switch between them while teaching. The best part is, you can add your material in advance, such as PowerPoint presentations, PDFs, YouTube videos, to name a few, and save that project to use later. 

So, all your classes can be prepared ahead of time, and you can boost your productivity!

Download ManyCam for free today and give it a try!

Technical Guidelines

Share technical information with your students about the platform you are conducting the online classes from. For example, if you are using Zoom, some students might not know how to use it. 

Also, make sure your online teaching equipment is all set before each class. If there are any technical issues, you can fix them before the actual class starts.

• Test your microphone, headset, and camera. Encourage your students to wear headphones to hear you properly during sessions.
• Place the webcam where there is plenty of light and conduct your classes in a room with no distractions. 
• Keep a back-up of your equipment, for example, a camera and microphone, in case they die.
• It is also crucial for you to stay in a room where the internet connection or WiFi is the best.
• Do another tech check before starting the class.

More on live video equipment here!

Appearance

Before starting your classes, clean your room. A messy room is not professional and won’t be a good look for you in front of your students. You can also consider using the Virtual Backgrounds available on ManyCam. This feature replaces your real background with images and videos. That way, you don’t need to worry about your environment at all. 

Be aware and alert about your behavior. Since you will be conducting an online video session, your students would be able to see you at all times. Be mindful forgetting you are in front of a camera is a common occurrence these days. You don’t want to go viral on the internet.

The chat room

The chat room will make sure your students don’t talk at once. Monitor it at all times. If one of your students wants to participate or answer questions, they can do so when you unmute their microphones. You can also assign one of your students to monitor the chat. You can ask them to summarize the posted questions for you.

Ask your students to take a few minutes to discuss the questions with others in another chat room during the class and then come back to the classroom chat.

Engaging students

Make sure the students are interested in your class and engaged throughout. You can incorporate different types of games, quizzes, or ice-breakers to make them participate in class. You can ask one of your shy students to participate in the discussions. You can also share progress with the class to motivate them to keep pushing themselves harder.

Share the lecture

After you have conducted the class, share the lecture and lecture slides with your students. When they study for their exams, they would be able to refer to the session.

Summarize the entire session, make notes and share those with your students as well. It will help you and your students keep a tab on what they have learned so far.

At the end of the class, give feedback on the students’ performance and ask them to write short feedback on the online course, teaching methods, teacher, and exams and quizzes.

We hope our essential online teaching checklist will make your next class go smoothly.

Ready to transform your online classes? Download ManyCam for free today!