The need for professionally qualified online teachers is growing, so now is a great time to enhance your virtual teaching skills and boost your professional development as a teacher. We interviewed Sarah Leek English Coordinator and Teacher in Germany and Alumni student from our Certificate in Online Tutoring course to ask her why she took the Certificate in Online Tutoring and how it has helped her in her career. Here’s what she had to say:
‘Quite a few reasons! I’d actually been planning to take the IH COLT for a few years as I’d already taken three other fantastic courses (Director of Studies, Teaching Training and Action Research) with IH OTTI. The flexibility and highly practical nature of these courses makes them a great way to keep on top of professional development. On a personal level, the course took place just before my maternity leave started. I was already feeling a little anxious at the prospect of returning to a completely different workplace after a year, so taking the course was a great confidence booster for me and a taster of things to come’.
Sarah continued ‘Once more, IH OTTI has proven itself to be an excellent provider of online CPD courses. I’ll admit, I was a little sceptical as to whether I would learn as much on this course as I had on the others because most of my postgraduate qualifications and training have been online, and I had taught online before the pandemic, too. However, I needn’t have worried – despite having a little experience, the theory and resources were almost completely new to me. I learnt about different types of online learners and what they might struggle with in an exclusively online environment as well as how to support them more effectively. I was also introduced to new digital resources such as Bubbl, Canva and WordWall, which I plan to use with my own students. Furthermore, we took an in-depth look at synchronous platforms and lesson planning ‘shapes’.
The trainers did a fantastic job of providing feedback on our forum posts in a wide range of different ways, which fed into the final module on ‘weaving’ really nicely. Similarly to the Teacher Training course, I was able to develop a training session I could actually use with my colleagues on this topic.
Of course, one of the highlights of the course is working with and learning from other course participants based all over the world. We were able to put ourselves in the shoes of our students as we worked through collaborative tasks in multiple time zones after a day’s work.
The course is very well designed and provides a very comprehensive overview of synchronous and asynchronous learning formats. I was also particularly impressed by how up to date it was, with extra resources and discussions embedded into the existing modules to reflect the current situation. I learnt a great deal about hybrid classrooms, which at the time were just emerging. Perhaps I should take the course again in a few years’ time!’
We are really glad that Sarah decided once again to attend a teacher training course with IH OTTI and wish her all the best in her future teaching online.
If you too would like to get qualified to teach online join the next 100% online IH COLT which starts on September 3rd 2022. It will provide you with the input you need to be a confident and effective teacher in online environments.
More information here: https://ihworld.com/teach/ih-online-teacher-training/ih-certificate-in-online-tutoring/