The impetus of an online course
Your course is likely right in front of you
Read time: 5 minutes
Here’s our TTT for this week on how to grow your online teaching business.
What is TTT? A Tip, Takeaway, and Task. On Thursday.
Enjoy!
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Tip: Don’t be stuck in the old way of online teaching
A quick story to start this week.
It was September, 2019, and the three of us were offering CPD workshops to language schools here in Toronto, Canada. We would offer workshops on essentially any topic the school felt their teachers needed help with.
We began pitching the idea of holding the workshops online.
This would allow the sessions to be more efficient, personal, and convenient for the staff. We also offered to do personal 1:1 follow up for each teacher via zoom to ensure their implementation of the new concepts were going alright.
Nope.
All schools wanted us to come on site, for 60 minutes. And see you next year, thanks.
“That’s how we do it,” they all said.
Of course, the pandemic swung the pendulum, and the industry hasn’t looked back.
Now, all schools want us to do online workshops for them. And now, we don’t offer that anymore - we’ve evolved in the way do things and our vision for helping teachers.
The point is that things can change quickly. And if we’re not ready, it can pass us by. As we believed we were one step ahead in 2019, it’s important to be one step ahead now in 2023.
It is our belief that we are in the midst of another great shift in ELT. This time, within the online space itself.
See here:
Old way of teaching:
coursebooks
1:1 lessons
time-based teaching
making lesson plans
New way of teaching:
personalized transformations
self-directed + live coaching
results-based teaching
students creating their own plans
It’s a movement towards customized learning and a focus on the process, not the product. Students require more support in terms of the process, not necessarily hand-holding.
In fact, “students” aren’t students at all; they’re people looking to improve themselves.
This is where online courses come in.
Takeaway: Create your Steps
An online course can be whatever you want it to be.
The word “course” gets thrown around a lot. Like everything, we tend to attach our own preconceptions to that term.
We define a term based on our own experiences. This is to be human. But in the online education space, this can also hold us back.
Don’t let the definition hold you back.
A course is simply a curated sequence of steps to help someone achieve something.
That’s it.
What it looks like or the means of getting there are just details.
Our first course was a Google Classroom and a monthly meeting.
Asynchronous?
Synchronous?
Hybrid?
Video courses?
PDF courses?
These are all details for later. Don’t get bogged down in the details. The important part is that you’re already thinking about it. Because that means you’re not going to get stuck in the old way.
Task: Create your Steps
When focusing on the small details that ultimately don’t matter that much, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and then procrastinate.
Remember: a course is simply a number of steps.
Your task this week is to think of a goal you help your students with. Then think of the amount of steps required to help them do that.
There’s your course.
For example, if you help students write personal essays for their university applications, how many steps are required to do that?
Give each of them a name and list them out. Then add the smaller steps inside of each step.
The best news is that if you’ve taught students previously, you’ve already done this. You just need to reflect on how you did it.
Your course is likely staring you in the face.
You got this.
And if you want some support putting it together, join our free community for teacherpreneurs.
We’ll test ideas together.
See you there.
When you’re ready, here are 3 ways we can help you:
1. Our free Business Foundations Training for Teachers (260 teachers)
2. TBLT Made Easy - use tasks in your class right away (116 teachers)
3. A free consultation with us to talk about taking your business and teaching to the next level (first come first served)
