Virtual Classes: Changing Face of Education

When Saumya Tandon (name changed), a software developer, was eagerly waiting for her annual appraisal in July this year, her manager called her into his cubicle and silently passed the appraisal letter and urged her to go through and express her concerns, she anxiously sneaked into the bottom line, and the immediate expressions on her face were laced with sadness. The thoughts that she carried out with her before entering into the cubicle vanished into the thin air and she was crest fallen. The reason: the appraisal was far below her expectations. The manager soon broke the ice and tried to keep her enthused by citing few other appraisals as how they have fared equally badly. When she mustered courage to question why this has happened to her and her peers as well, the manager in his sangfroid mood got down to brass tacks – the company has steered a policy to encourage continuous learning and earn necessary diplomas and certifications which would help improve their performance, and that was the reason why she and others were deprived of a certain percentage of benefits in their annual appraisal. This is not just the story of Saumya and her colleagues who fared badly in their annual appraisals, rather it's a ground reality that has affected many employees who forgot to brace up them with the latest degrees or diplomas required to excel in their professional journey.

Being employed and getting diplomas and degrees are not hard nuts to crack these days. The virtual education system of late has transformed the landscape of learning methods. Virtual education is now an integral part of both corporates and educational institutes those are vying for democratising education, training, and professional skills across the board. The emerging trends in the evolution of Internet have brought about significant changes in the way people think about the concepts of education, campus, curriculum, courses, learning processes, credentials, and diplomas.

With a growing number of people opting out for both continuation of education and simultaneous employment, it has become imperative for institutes and universities to tread the path of innovation and fulfill the needs of virtual students. Online education has certainly changed the way people think about education today. What's more encouraging for students that the flexibility of virtual classes has attracted people from all walks of life. Whether they are housewives, working professionals or students engaged in part-time employment, the 24x7 accessibility to the virtual class rooms allows all to complete their study with a greater flexibility. As technology enables virtual students to access pre-recorded lectures, assignments, online forums, whiteboards, and online tests, the learning process has become hugely interactive and engaging for students.

What's more rational for people to opt for online education largely depends upon the low cost of program along with myriads of opportunities to participate in virtual classes. With powerful pedagogy backed by virtual community learning, virtual classrooms have eventually harnessed technology for nurturing social simulations, helping students to interact with fellow learners and exchange views, and finally engaging them in an environment that they can feel the presence of real classrooms. The technology that once thought to be a prerogative of elitists has finally broken down that myth and the universalisation of education through virtual classrooms is a pointer that signifies the importance of thinking beyond the obvious.

Linux Cloud Hosting: The New Shift

In an extremely competitive environment where enterprises are forced to achieve more from less, the adoption of cloud computing has become the new paradigm shift. To leverage flexibility, speed and cost advantages, the enterprises are not only moving towards cloud computing, but also increasingly they are depending upon the ubiquitous technology called Linux. Undoubtedly, the lethal combination of cloud computing and Linux has become the unusual steroid for business transformation. The advent of IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) has brought along a whole new set of considerations. Apart from flexibility, speed, accessibility, higher availability, and lower cost, the most critical consideration is an open-source technology that supports the all other parameters. In true sense, Linux has taken over many proprietary technologies used in cloud hosting because it offers economy with scale in a more calibrated manner. Perhaps, that's the reason why the top-tier cloud computing solutions such as Amazon EC2, ElasticHosts, Mozy, Google Apps, Blue Cloud, and vCloud are powered by Linux.

Why Linux?

Linux has become the de facto technology for cloud computing. It's not just the cost advantage that attracts the global players to run cloud infrastructure on Linux, but there are a number of other important factors that support this trend.

Architecture

While a technology offers flexibility for customization, it adaptability becomes universal. And that's the core strength of Linux kernel. The configurability, compotentization, customization, and high availability are few parameters that drive the whole business of cloud computing. With Linux at core, the architecture of cloud computing becomes robust and flexible for disparate customer requirements.

Compatibility and Standards

In a cloud computing ecosystem, the customers prefer open-source service architecture because they benefit hugely while extending their local data center to cloud. With thousands of open source applications available in the market, the customers bank on Linux for hosting and administration. Thus it becomes imperative for cloud service providers to bang on a common standard for better usage.

Manageability

Adopting to a technology becomes faster when its manageability becomes easier and cost effective. As Linux becomes a core common skill for infrastructure administrators, the cloud computing solutions providers trade cautiously. And here comes the rationale for the cloud players to leverage the demand for Linux.

Cost

Apart from licensing cost of proprietary platform, the running cost guzzles out huge money on power consumption. Where as Linux-based platform can be run on scale-down hardware which require lower power consumption in comparison to other high-end hardware. So, from managing a data center to administering client units, Linux offers a credible cost-saving option for customers.

Conclusion

With growing adoption of cloud computing in next generation businesses, the leading solutions providers are considering critical parameters including but not limited to cost optimization and technology delimitation. The flexibility of usage, scalability, affordability, and faster replication have added more reasons for solutions providers to engage Linux with cloud computing. Perhaps, the technology leaders like Amazon and Google have internalized this truth.

Engaging Audiences for Optimum Learning Output

Great online trainings not only cater to reaching out to maximum audiences across geographies at any given point of time, but also they offer superior learning experiences, which even can be rated higher than the conventional learning model in terms of quality and effectiveness. With increasing competition in this space, the challenges for the training solutions providers have been manifold, partly because the faster innovation in learning technologies infuses unlimited expectations in learners' mind. That in turn pitches a war path for training solutions providers to seriously optimize the crafting of online training in a manner that could even engage the audiences more effectively than that of a physical training environment. Here are are some important pointers for an engaging online training model.

Online Icebreaker

In an online training environment, audiences don't expect a boring, high-sounding introduction speech. What they want is a compelling, warmed-up starter, which would drive their curiosity and engage them for a longer duration. So what do you do then? Start with a great anecdote? Bang with a survey poll? Or surprise them with some amazing facts, not available to public easily? The call is yours. Different audience groups have different tastes, but the single fact that bind them all is pure emotion. Charge them with a hot starter that would transform their enthusiasm into a riveting life-time experience.

Peer Partnership and Team Activities

Online environment offers a wide range of possibilities for collaborative learning. Engaging students in collaborative learning can significantly increase their learning standard. According to a research, students remember only 10% what they read by themselves; however, they can remember 70% what they discuss with others, and even remember 95% what they teach to others. Thus a collaborative learning with with peers and team-based activities can help improve the learning standards of students. With a range of new technologies available, you can adopt some pertinent ones like micro-blogging, discussion forums, instant messaging, interactive white boards, and audio and video conferencing to enrich their learning experience.

Reflective Activity

Online learning environment can be transformed into a pure reflective medium in which students can express their thoughts through various tools such as blog, wiki, and email. As a reflective activity takes some time to cogitate and deliver the task, the solution provider can assign them with complex questions, which would require a fair amount of brainstorm and reading from various sources before expressing their thoughts on a collaborative space. Moreover, you can ask online participants to create a movie by themselves and post it on YouTube and send the link for trainer review. This way students can group them and pitch in for a better creative output.

Authentic Activity

Activities are an essential part of any learning model. In online model, during any coursework or session or post fact, you can engage students with random instant questionnaires from a master question bank. With various types of ratings and ranking systems, you can ensure students are both learning and also getting incentive. This will certainly optimize the learning process of students.

Games and Simulation

Games and simulations are a great incentive for online learning. Learning with fun is the new truth. While designing an online learning coursework, you can embed videos, games, and simulated stories to enrich the learning process. With advanced software on gaming and simulation hitting market every other day, the learning solution provider can offer a comprehensive teaching model by adopting to various tricks, and they work as well.

Learner-led Activity

When learners take the lead in designing and delivering various activities, they feel empowered and responsible for their actions. This model provides online learners an element of authority that in turn helps the learners contribute to the learning community in a great measure. However, there is a significant amount of responsibility from the solution provider. While engaging audiences through learner-led activity, you should ensure that the objectives of the activity are clearly articulated, scope of creativity is highly encouraged, and gradings are explicitly explained.

Conclusion

Learning is a continuous process and certainly it doesn't happen in vacuum. For an engaging online learning environment, innovation always drives the lead. A combination of creativity and technology can even do wonders. In fact, there are many ways making this possible.

Future Perfect

The perception towards teaching is rapidly changing. The pure, conventional, dreary face-to-face teaching is now a thing of past. With educational institutes and private companies increasingly promoting and preferring the learners to take online education, the online teaching has today emerged as a new drift, a newfangled vocation for smart teachers who in all probability could be super task masters. The online education as an industry has also shown tremendous growth both in enrollment and turnover. According to forecasts of Marketdata Enterprises, Inc., the market size in the US can grow at 7.7 percent per year from 2012 to 2015 touching $78 billion. The same report further suggests that the enrollment status for online education is proportionately promising. From a current estimate of 6.4 million enrollment in 2012, the figure can even reach 7.4 million in 2015.

The proliferation of innovative learning technologies blended with evolutionary social web engagements are fast transforming the landscape of online teaching to the super green venture of future. Of late the semantics of online teaching strikes the right chord with the changing mindset of new-age learners. Who does like a boring face-to-face classroom teaching? The advent of highly collaborative and exciting online learning environment powered by a barrel of modern technologies has metamorphosed the exposition of learning. The journey of online teaching is just poised to take a big leap. Ready to grab the opportunity? 

The Paradigm Shift

Teaching today is not a sheer linear, one-directional method in which one preaches and others faithfully listen. With evolution of technology and ever growing new demands of learners, teaching has been a more complex subject. Earlier teachers used to believe in a limited aspects of teaching process; however, today the role is more demanding than it was ever before. The intervention of state in education system, growing public-private partnership, proliferation of technology, customized learning, and multi-level evaluation process collectively define the complexity of new-age learning and equally so the pressing role of an online teacher.

Role of Teacher

The academic version of teaching is expanding rigorously. The functions of teachers are not limited to coursebook completion, rather a number of pertinent parameters are being added. First, the accountability of learning outcome has become a major concern for teachers. And this opens up many avenues for the role of a teacher. For example, diagnosing learners' needs, customization of program based on individual learners, keeping learner-centered environment, innovating instructional strategies, planning lessons, evaluating quality of content, program effectiveness, continuous evaluation process, site-based decision making, allocation of technological resources, monitoring learners' performance, and assessing learning outcomes are some new responsibilities that a teacher should discharge to stay competitive with the changing time. Teaching now evolved into an exciting and challenging profession.

Role of Technology

Technology is a key enabler of modern teaching process. From lesson planning to content creation to distribution to evaluation, each stage has been jazzed up by the touch of technology. Notebooks, pens, and pencils are nearly discarded and being replaced by high-tech gadgets like laptops, tablets, and smart phones. Learning is becoming more exciting with the advent of many interactive tools and social webs. Tech-savvy teachers are increasingly banking on Google Apps, Skype, Wiki, Blogs, and YouTube to grab the attention of students. A modern classroom can be compared with a high-tech laboratory.

From Classroom to Virtual Learning Environment

The landscape of learning is transforming faster than the mindset of learners. In an extremely connected world, where knowledge and information are easily accessible, the learning environment has crossed the border of classrooms. Thanks to technological innovation. In an age of globalization, technological advancement has proved to be catalyst in bringing in novel nomenclature in education, be it “virtual learning”, “online classes” or “virtual classroom.”

Huge investment in education sector to democratize learning process has developed a universal ecosystem for virtual learning. Historically, in the US, University of Phoenix started country's first online degree program in 1989. Today, more than 150,000 students are enrolled online for various programs including Bachelor's, Master's and Doctoral degrees. Matching with the industry requirement, University of Phoenix produces latest course curricula and delivers quality education over web.

University of Phoenix was the icebreaker. Now over 2500 colleges and universities in the US offer online programs. According to a survey conducted by Babson Survey Research Group, in 2010 alone over 6.1 million students at least opted for one online class, a stark 10.1 percent rise over the previous year. “Nearly thirty percent of all college and university students now take at least one course online,” says study co-author I Elaine Allen, Co-Director of the Babson Survey Research Group and Professor of Statistics & Entrepreneurship at Babson College.

The growing numbers of online enrollment in various global colleges and universities suggest that the time has come for a tradeoff between learners and teachers. The erstwhile monopoly of classroom teachers is gradually collapsing and simultaneously the demand for online teachers is moving northward.

Need of Online Teaching

The growing need of online education among students and working professionals has profound implications on online teaching. With emergence of internet and other collaborative technologies, the teaching landscape has been ever changing. The online environment provides a number of advantages over traditional, face-to-face classes. Along with real course-ware, for instance, the online teachers can integrate many informational resources via a web page, which could be a blog/article, a video, a multimedia presentation, or a threaded discussion forum. Imagine the benefits the virtual learners can achieve. This also expands the scope of responsibilities of online teacher. Now the online learners communities expect their teachers should not only meet their expectations, but also in most cases they should exceed. The fun of learning lies in its engaging characteristics. Apart from the richness of learning, there are other dimensions, discussed in this section, as well that propel the growth story of online learning, and online teaching as a demanding profession.

Breaking the Barrier

As education is an investment-intensive program, many bright students often shed the idea of getting enrolled in a reputed US college. However, the online learning programs offered by various colleges/universities in the US and other countries have allowed students to go for learning even from disadvantaged locations with a fraction of cost that's normally incurred when one opts for regular courses. So, the online education first dislodges the rich-poor divide while spreading quality education in a democratic manner. Primarily, online education is easily accessible anywhere in the world if the learner has a computer and an internet connection at home. Moreover, students find it convenient to get course materials such as homework, exam schedules, test scores, and certificates without struggling.

Accessibility

The popularity of online education lies in its easy accessibility. For face-to-face learning, students normally wait for a specific time when the instructor/teacher is available to take the class; however, through online education, they can find all information regarding a subject by simply browsing the desired website or even can start a live chat with an expert in that field. What's more interesting that students can also consult peers via a web chat. This whole exercise provides a meaningful way to enhance the overall learning experience of students. Furthermore, online teachers can disseminate information to thousands of students in real-time, which is hardly possible in face-to-face teaching.

Quality of Learning

Many online teachers also invite experts such as researchers and authors as guests to their virtual classes. Sometimes, eminent professors and industry professionals also join various web-casts to enrich the learning program of students. Although this happens in physical classrooms, the difference in online environment is that a student/learner can be multitasking while attending to any such program. As technology continues to advance, teachers can invest time to build various scenarios and case studies to enhance the learning process of students. Apart from a SCORM-based curriculum, teachers use various other mediums such as Wiki, Blogs, Forums, Chat, and Videos to deliver quality content.

Higher Student Engagement

The online learning becomes more engaging because it evokes both deeper and boarder discussions when learners willingly participate in the learning process with their peers and teachers more actively. Each student gets exposed to an array of debates and thought-provoking discussions, which in turn permeates a psychological impulse for a non-participating student to break his or her silence and contribute to the learning process.

In an asynchronous learning environment students get sufficient time to go though threaded discussions posted in a forum and post their own after deep analysis. This increases the participation of students in comparison to classroom teaching where the constraints of time is a major dampener.

Anonymity Brings Empowerment

Anonymity plays a major role in online education. It creates more equality among the students in an online class. Normally students feel free to ask any question to an online teacher without any inhibition because there is no direct eye contact with teacher. At the same time, the online teachers also find it quite easy to respond to any query as there is classroom disturbance syndrome, which is quite common in a face-to-face teaching environment. So this is a win-win both for students and teachers.

Communication Matters

The most unique aspect of online teaching is that teachers and students rarely see one another, and this specific feature brings in a major responsibility for online teacher – comprehensive communication. So, online teachers should focus on the communication part of teaching, whether it's related to coursework designing, evaluating students academic progress, responding students' queries through emails/chats/discussion forums, or posting a blog/article on their website. The basic requirement is online teachers should write and communicate well, unfailingly. And they should understand the nuances of words and verbiages so that there is no communication barrier.

Future of Online Teaching

Education sector is experiencing an overwhelming degree of transformation with the emergence of digital age. From social web to high-touch apps to tablets and smart phones, today's education embraces the digital revolution wither greater emphasis on mass collaboration and faster communication. With cutting-edge learning technologies, teaching and learning now become more demanding than ever before. Especially in higher education segment, the adoption of new technologies and innovative methodologies is visibly prominent. This is backed by “2010 Sloan Survey of Online Learning” report that underlines the fact that enrollment in online courses in the US colleges almost increased by one million students from the previous year. And the most revealing fact of this survey is that approximately 30 percent of all college and university students now take at least one online course.

Students are increasingly opting out for online education because of flexibility of timing, customized learning packages, easy accessibility, and a value for money. Also the education service provides such as public and private institutes and universities are heading towards a deep competitive regime. The players in online education space would only sustain the growing competition provided they adopt new technologies, encourage innovation both in pedagogy and delivery, and engage smart teaching staff to deliver the best learning package. While new technologies are popping up every alternate week, their applicability and acceptance largely depends upon the opinion leaders and evangelists and in this case they are the new-age teachers and instructors who can bridge the gap between learners' adaption and the desired outcome of industry expectations. And this evolves more responsibilities and greater accountability of teaching staff. If technology plays a significant role in the transformation of online education, equally so the online teachers, and for them staying afloat during the journey is more relevant than anything else.

Bringing in Enhanced Pedagogy

In online education, the primary element that drives the tempo of popularity is pedagogical strategy. An effective pedagogical strategy for online teaching can ensure richness in learning, student engagement, and desired learning outcomes. Here comes a tribe called subject matter experts who decide the online instructional strategies. According to a survey on higher education in the United States, the respondents who are mostly teaching staff opine that the best instruction strategy is the one which supports and encourages the learner's inquisitiveness, widens the learner's perspectives on the subject matter, infuses critical and creating thinking, and brings about sustained growth in overall experience. Hence the onus lies on the online teachers who are supposed to carry out research and suggest the desired changes in the instructional practices.

Using New Technologies

Technology plays an important role in the success story of online education. In last two decades, an increasing number of universities and colleges in the United States have adopted new technologies while delivering learning. The evolution of Internet has transformed the learning process in higher education. According to an online survey conducted through the members (both teaching staff and administrative personnel) Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching (MERLOT) or the Western Cooperative for Educational Telecommunications (WCET), the respondents opine that several emerging technologies for online education have found their acceptance for course management. Whether it's online test tools, online library, streaming videos, live chats, discussion forums, and wikis, they have all contributed significantly to the learning experience. The adaption is increasing proportionately with dawning of new technologies. Even today many universities have gone beyond the formal teaching methodologies. Gamification, social web, synchronous conferencing, and real-time collaboration have marked an increased adaption.

Meeting Spiraling Demand of Learners

One interesting factor that still holds a precious position in online education arena is that the demand of online education is revving up. And this aspect drives the industry crazy. When demand is rising, it's certain that the online educational players foresee a better future. But that doesn't singularly excite them because in that comes a whole lot of hard works. Online learners are gradually tasting the demand-supply churning. It's quite tricky a scenario. Very similar to customer service market. More the service providers, happier the customers. Because the competition among various educational players at least ensures the services are competitive in quality and cost. And this aspect of competition is a never-ending cycle. So what comes out from this churn is an array of new demands like pedagogical competency, technical competency of teachers, course and content quality, quality of service, worth of certification, industry acceptance, and not the least a competitive pricing structure.

What Do You Need to Be an Online Teacher?

Teaching face-to-face and teaching online are altogether two distinct subjects. It's not necessary to claim that a very good conventional teacher who has received scores of applause from students could be a successful online teacher. The first and foremost challenge faced by an online teacher is understanding the online environment. Many bright teachers who are engaged in face-to-face teaching even feel reluctant to teach online. On the contrary, teachers having sound knowledge of pedagogy and a fair amount of understanding online technologies can deliver better results. Barring technology there are other dimensions as well which play key roles in the making of a successful online teacher.

Understanding the Environment

The chief characteristic of online teaching environment is that it's driven by technology, so it may require an adequate knowledge of contemporary technologies to stay competitive. An online teacher should understand that the flexibility of classroom teaching is limited in online teaching. Hence it requires more planning, organizing, commitment, preparation, creativity, time management, discipline, empathy, and detailing to optimize the learning experience.

Comfortable with Technology

While many teachers believe that a formal understanding of computer and Internet would bail them out in online teaching, the truth is just contrary. It's much beyond the connotation of computer literacy. For online teaching, a high degree of comfort with various tools and applications marks the premium. It finally boils down to how efficiently you use the technologies at your disposal to optimize the entire learning experience of students. Here are some essential technology skills that online teachers should possess:

• Working knowledge of collaborative documentation tools, for example, Google Docs
• Hands-on experience with web conferencing tools, for example, Mikago, Skype, etc
• Email management skills
• Online presentation skills
• Videoconferencing skills
• Social media skills including blogging and handling online forums
• Website building skills
• Knowledge of unified communication tools
• Knowledge of SCROM-compliance tools for designing courseware
• Content management system skills

Teaching Strategy

Although many classroom teachers are well-versed with face-to-face teaching methodologies, when it comes to online, they often mess up. While teaching online, the teachers should practice the following strategies to ensure effective learning environment:

• Define student-centered activities to evaluate learning effectiveness
• Facilitate and moderate online discussions
• Encourage problem-based and collaborative learning
• Provide timely feedback
• Use interactive/simulated tools to enrich learning

Online Teaching Certification

While most of the teachers have teaching certification/diploma, online teaching requires a lot more than that. Given the technological and pedagogical skills required by online teaching, the aspirants in this profession should possess online teaching qualifications. There are many universities and colleges in the US such as Drexel University which offer exclusive online teaching training for teachers. This training offers critical skill development such as pedagogical skills, interfacing with online technologies, mentoring and moderation skills, instructional strategy skills, and social web skills.

Tools and Connectivity

The fundamentals of online teaching are that they happen in a virtual medium where learners may be sitting at any corner of the world. So to interface with learners the online teachers should have the following tools and gadgets.

• A standard desktop loaded with basic applications such as Word Processor, PowerPoint, Spreadsheets, course authoring tools, collaborative white boards, collaborative working tools, designing software.
• Peripherals such as webcam, headset, external storage drive
• Broadband Internet connectivity
• Subscribed to web mails and chat apps

Best Practices

Online teaching is one of the smartest vocations of 21^st century. With growing needs of online education, the scope of online teaching has been widened in the past decade. The new-age online teachers though are bedecked with many skills, here are seven best practices that would certainly value add to the overall skills.

Best Practice 1: Be Regular

Regularity breeds contempt, but here the contrary works wonder. An online teacher who maintains the predefined schedules and keep the learners updated about programs, announcements, discussions, and postings becomes the most popular among online learners.

Best Practice 2: Be Supportive

Online teaching needs a fair amount of continuous support in terms of developing online course community; posting lectures, videos, audios, and blogs; attending to forum questions; developing social we ecosystem; and setting up support groups.

Best Practice 3: Set Expectations

Setting right expectations for students and yourself can make the learning process practicable. Here you can create a sharable document pointing out the rules for communication, instruction for students, feedback response time, and specifically your schedule.

Best Practice 4: Develop Community

Online teaching can be more engaging when it's supported by a variety of teaching communities with broad-based experiences in online teaching. This encourages brainstorming among students.

Best Practice 5: Judicious Use of Synchronous and Asynchronous Tools

Online education originally started with asynchronous way; however, with influx of new technologies, it has become synchronous. As an online teacher you have to decide to draw a line where you need to go for what. Both are important, but in a collaborative world every method has an edge.

Best Practice 6: Continuous Feedback

Faster feedback helps students save their time in correcting themselves. Don't wait for tomorrow. Make it a practice to provide real-time feedback, and this will amplify the degree of learning enthusiasm.

Best Practice 7: Create a To-Do List

Prepare a To-Do list for students by clearly articulating their tasks, activities, and other necessary information that they often require.

Skills Required for an Online Teacher

Online teaching requires more complex skills than conventional teaching. When medium and environment of learning change, it becomes imperative for teachers to concentrate on a number of factors simultaneously. Apart from the common teaching skills, the online teachers need a set of competencies in various domains such as technology, administrative, pedagogy, and communication. Here each skill set is elaborated based on teaching requirements.

Technology Skills

Sound understanding of emerging technologies is an essential requirement for online teachers. As medium of instruction changes in online teaching, technology takes over the manageability of dissemination. Thus it becomes important for online teachers to gain multiple skills which include, but not limited to the following list:

• Understanding operation of computer
• Knowledge of operating system
• Knowledge of basic application pool such as Word Processing, Spreadsheets, and PowerPoint
• Database management skills
• Project management skills
• File management and storing
• Hands-on experience in online collaborative tools
• Social media and blogging skills
• Online research skills
• eLearning management system
• eLearning content authoring system
• Content management system
• Email management system
• Working knowledge of unified communications suite
• Network management skills
• Web designing skills
• HTML authoring skills
• Scripting skills
• Data storage management
• Knowledge of modern computer peripherals such as webcam, digicam, scanner, bluetooth
• Common software installation

Administrative Skills

While conventional teachers have the luxury of using institutional support/administrative support, the online teachers badly need those skills to develop. Here are few skills that you should develop before embarking on the online teaching job.

• Schedule management
• Audio/video conference setup
• Student information management
• Account management
• Payment management
• Mail response

Pedagogy Skills

Online teaching is as much technological as pedagogical. A teacher with good pedagogical skills has a better edge than his/her peers. Here are certain skills that you should learn before jumping in to the fray.

• Learning analysis
• Instructional designing
• Community building
• Reflective teaching
• Creative teaching
• Brainstorming
• Forum management
• Lesson planning
• Activity designing
• Knowledge of Shareable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM)
• Test evaluation

Communication Skills

Communication is the key to become a successful teacher. In online teaching, good communications skills saves time and even enhances the quality of learning. A teacher with bad communication skills often creates confusion in learners mind. An online teacher should consider the following aspects of communication.

• Structure of communication
• Cross-culture communication
• Procedural communication
• Technical communication
• Cooperative communication
• Personal communication
• Strategic communication

Challenges You Face for Online Teaching

Although online teaching seems to be a very exciting career, it comes with a fair amount of challenges. However, these can be addressed effectively to ensure smooth sailing. The primary challenge an online teacher faces is to become “jack of all trades”. You need to wear many hats during teaching – teacher, mentor, facilitator, tech geek, and administrator. Sometimes online teachers find it difficult to switch from one train of thought to another due to lack of multi-tasking skills. Secondly, an online teacher needs to innovate constantly and it requires sufficient time to develop this mindset. Constraint of time and loads of responsibility often hard presses an online teacher to repeat the learning methodology. Apart from the intellectual aspect of challenges there are other physical challenges as well. For example, while taking an online class if your Internet connectivity fails, it mars your reputation, in which you don't have any control. A similar problem happens when you use a specific online tool and the server goes down. Here are some top challenges that an online teacher faces.

• Establishing the resonance with online students
• Adapting to the cultural practices of various origins
• Calibrating learning outcomes with efforts
• Transforming learning theories into practice
• Zeroing on appropriate learning models vis-a-vis learners' requirements
• Being hands-on with latest tools/applications to meet growing expectations of learners
• Addressing emerging ethical issues in virtual medium
• Understanding the evolving role of techno-academic profession
• Handling data security issues

On a conclusive note, even you can manage mastering skills and stay competitive, other external challenges can be sometimes irksome, though not difficult to assuage.

Tools Required to Teach Online

While teaching online, teachers require a number of tools for various purposes. Starting from defining a pedagogical strategy to lesson planning to course-ware authoring to delivery of content, online teaching is a complex task and more specifically you can't do it with a single tool or application. To deliver successful online teaching programs, you need to master a number of tools and applications. And the best part is that they are available free or at a very nominal price, which can be easily affordable.

Here is an exhaustive list of tools that can help you excel in your profession. You can visit each website and learn more about the product.

Animoto Assign-A-Day Audacity Blogger Blogmeister Boolify Box.net Calendars.net ClassTools Classroom 2.0 Ning CommonCraft Curriki Delicious Diigo Dropbox Facebook Flashcard Exchange Filamentality Flickr FreshPond.net Gcast Gliffy Glogster Goodreads

Google Google Apps Google Calendar Google Docs Google Earth Google Maps iGoogle Jing Project Kuler Lesson Plans Library Thing Library 2.0 Ning Librivox Meebo MyT4L Netvibes Ning Notesake Open Clip Art Library Picasa Picnik Personal Educational Press Project Based Learning Checklists

QuickTopic Remember the Milk RSS Newsfeed Generator RubiStar Rubric Machine School 2.0 Ning SchoolTube Scribd Skrbl Skype Slideshare Study Stack TeacherTube Trackstar Twiddla Twitter VoiceThread Web 2.0 Tutorial Videos Wikis Wordle xTimeline Yugma Zamzar

Earning Potential of Teaching Online

A common myth that sticks to teaching profession that it's not at all a lucrative profession. However, this is not true. A recent news on the earnings of a kindergarten teacher by selling lesson plan online rightly discards this false notion. According to this news report, Deanna Jump, a kindergarten teacher from Georgia, US, has earned mindbogglingly $700,000 from simply selling lesson plans on Teachers Pay Teachers, a startup ecommerce platform where teachers sell their lesson plans to fellow educators. This is just tip of the iceberg. In the US, a fairly experienced online teacher can earn $50-150 per hour.

The salary of online professor in the US is quite competitive; however, the earnings vary based on various parameters such as location, institution, position, domain, teaching experience, and level of expertise. According to a survey conducted by the American Association of University Professors in 2008–09, salaries for full-time teaching staff averaged $79,439. Further classification by ranks reveals that the average salary of professors was $108,749, for associate professors was $76,147, and for assistant professors was $63,827.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) 2009 data, the average annual salary for high school teachers, both classroom and online teaching, was $52,200; however, the highest-paid teachers in the 90th percentile earned more than $82,000 annually. The salary also varies based on cities. For example, the highest-paid high school teacher in New York, Illinois, and Alaska earned $68,010, $67,960, and $67,640 respectively. Moreover, the salaries also vary in a particular city based on specific locations. For example, in the metropolitan areas such as

Nassau-Suffolk in New York, Chicago-Naperville-Joliet in Illinois, and Santa Ana-Anaheim-Irvine area in California, the top salary was $83,560, $74,530, and $73,890 respectively.

At the post-secondary level, the salaries are even visibly more. According to BLS report, the post-secondary teachers even get more than $128,330 at the top level. The highest salaries in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, California , and the District of Columbia were $115,130, $87,820, $87,780, $84,930, and $84,270 respectively. Although there is no striking difference between the salary of classroom and online teachers, the salaries vary according to industry, institute, and subject. For a deserving professional sky is the limit.

Conclusion

The changing educational environment, technological evolution, and market demand have equally contributed to the growth of this industry. The growing need of flexibility, accessibility, quality of learning and meaningful results have supported the journey of online education. As innovation is the cornerstone of technological evolution, the future of online teaching is certainly going to be more engaging and enriched. The aspirants for this profession need to focus on the core aspects of online teaching – the medium, the strategy, the enabler, and the market. The ecosystem for online education is abuzz with ideas and their realization. It's just a matter of conviction as how effectively you transform yourself from a conventional view point to radical approach through which you can explore the world of opportunities in this domain.

A Slice of Oprah Winfrey

Oprah Winfrey has of late sparked hullabaloo in media circle post her recent telecasting of two-episode Next Chapter, based upon her experience gathered from the sojourn visit to India this January. Though the talk-show to some extent has put India in poor light from cultural point of view, what's more outrageous than Oprah's understanding about Indian culture and tradition is Indians' inherent barometric intolerance culture, so thin-skinned than a whimper of whisper can create patches of rashes almost instantly. Barring certain vituperative remarks such as “I heard some Indian people eat with their hands still?” the episode attempts to decipher the glaring contrasts of India. From slums of Mumbai to incredible Taj Mahal, each talking point has touched the conscious deliberation of Oprah.

Whether a bunch of people live under the same roof in a cubicle size room in Mumbai slum or majority of Indians still eat with their hands, the narrative purely reflects Oprah's typical story-telling style. And bringing the ground reality to public scrutiny has moved many into tears especially in Oprah's talk-shows. However, as a renowned television anchor Oprah has unwittingly exposed her pseudo-intellectual underbelly, a syndrome that has infected many prime time anchors in India as well. The pith of problem here is not what's packaged, but the real issue is much deeper. An anchor can't be a master of all trades what's otherwise popularly projected by media. Every anchor has limitation of understanding the real problem. Even a layman can put better perspectives on a contemporary problem than a great anchor. 

Making superficial comments on five-thousand-year old Indian culture is the most bizarre thing that can be least expected from Oprah, but the reality is sitting at 100,000 feet height and facetiously explaining the ground zero is equally derisive. Irrespective of her multi-billion media empire and huge experience in talk-shows, she has a vulnerable side as well - Oprah lives on the surface of human wisdom. There is much underneath. Subtle and profound. She must explore, analyze, and then express. Probably she can then become the most adorable anchor, beyond the cobweb of seductive statistics that she currently grandstands.

Mission BYOD: Are Risks Worth Taking?

With growing proliferation of smart mobile devices in the consumer market, the new age professionals have quickly shifted from PCs to laptops, tablets, and smart phones. According to IT Consumer Survey conducted by IDC in April 2011, while 88 percent consumers surveyed use a desktop to access Internet for business or personal use, 91 percent use a laptop, 80 percent use smart phone, and 36 percent use a tablet for the same purpose. This is an indication of how fast the smart devices are being penetrated into consumer space. Driven by this trend enterprises are compelled to introduce bring-your-own-device (BYOD) model in the organization. In the first place, this trend not only helps enterprises save spiraling IT infrastructure cost significantly, but also it improves the productivity of employees. Nevertheless, this comes with a caveat – challenges associated with enterprise data security. Now that the enterprises can't reverse the trend of smart work culture, the limited option left for them is to evaluate various dimensions of risks associated with BYOD model and smartly implement an enterprise-wide data security program.

Here are some major concerns that pose serious deliberations before allowing BYOD program in the organization.

• Does the organization have a full-proof BYOD policy?
• Does the organization have a stringent security policy related to critical data exchange over employee devices?
• How will these devices be connected to various data servers in the organization?
• What if the employee leaves or gets fired?
• What if the employee device is lost or theft and passed to a rouge element?
• What are the IT infrastructural limitations for mobility programs?
• What are the monitoring programs for keeping a tab upon a variety of heterogeneous devices?

Advantages of BYOD

Every technology revolution has its fair share of advantages. And the growing trend of smart mobile device adoption by employees at workplaces has more edges. According to a study on BYOD conducted by Cisco, 76 percent respondents said that adopting to BYOD was somewhat or extremely positive for their organizations. The same study reveals that BYOD apart from operational excellence there is a significant cost benefit. As per some estimation done by Cisco, an employee engaged in BYOD can benefit the organization in the range of $300 to $1300. Primarily, the companies allowing BYOD accrue the following benefits.

• Optimized employee performance: Smart devices provide more flexibility to contemporary work culture. They also increase collaboration among employees, management, and customers. Employees can be equally productive while they are traveling or working from home.
• Enhanced employee satisfaction: While employees are allowed to bring their own smart devices to work place, they never crib about obsolete desktop, as often provisioned by the organization. Since they are convenient with their own devices and also they understand the nuances of usage, their independence from the buckles of IT helpdesk provides a sense of contentment.
• Increased client satisfaction: Mostly employees working in the sales and support program quickly respond to customers' concerns, which ultimately elevates customer satisfaction.
• Significant cost savings: With employees taking care of their own devices, companies save a significant portion of IT spending on purchase of hardware and other allied devices. Moreover, companies can save on phone plans, SMS plans, Internet services, and helpdesk overhead.
• Reduced management intervention: Allowing BYOD to employees, the management eliminates a number of additional responsibilities such as selection of vendors, monitoring of employee data usage, and purchase decisions.

Risks Associated with BYOD

While enterprises leverage the benefits of BYOD, there are some genuine concerns as well. According to a survey conducted by Mimecast in 2012, 74 percent respondents emphasized that the biggest challenge of BYOD is information security. By allowing employees' own mobile devices to premises, companies open a floodgate of security and privacy issues that could cost them huge amount of money in terms of fine and critical data loss. Here are some critical risks that spring from the BYOD program.

• Security threats: Mobile devices, especially smart phones, are often vulnerable to hacking. Since mobile platforms are not matured yet the security risks associated with them are not well articulated by device makers. When an employee downloads a new application there is enough chance that the software might be a malware or a tracking program that can eavesdrop any conversation taking place over the device.
• Spreading of malware in the network: If the device is connected through a Wi-Fi or Bluethooth, there is a larger possibility of that the device can play a dumb to tricks of hackers who can spread malware in the entire network. Malware can cause a huge loss of enterprise data and customer information.
• Loss or theft of devices: Since mobile devices are small and easily portable, they are prone to loss and theft. That threatens the loss of critical enterprise data.
• Lack of enterprise-level security controls: As employees use a variety of devices and all that operate on different platforms, it become quite cumbersome for the organization to streamline a single security blanket policy.
• Spamming: Unsolicited messages and contents eats out the bandwidth and storage. Although spams can't directly pose threat to data, any response to that can create otherwise.
• Phishing activities: Phishing is a serious concern for mobile devices as users can't detect it right there as often they can do in PCs and laptops.

Managing the Risks

Risks are often thwarted when they are understood well. In case of BYOD, organizations not only face security challenges, but also they come across with a slew of legal challenges as well. For example, loss of customer information, which is protected under privacy act, can draw huge legal complications for the organization. In the recent time, companies like Facebook and Yahoo have lost millions of customers' personal information to hackers. That indeed reflects how vulnerable the large technology enterprise are. But for any organization, small or big, a comprehensive policy on data security and framework for workable BYOD model can ensure the benefits of smart work culture. A report titled “Five steps to a successful BYOD program” published by Forrester, emphasizes that the more an employee has access to privileged data, the more powerful should be the information security rules.

The organizations can consider the following strategies to avoid susceptible risks and leverage the advantages of BYOD program. Before allowing employees to bring their own mobile devices to the workplace, the companies should enact a comprehensive BYOD policy, which would address major BYOD concerns.

The BYOD policy should include, but not limited to the aspects such as employee usage, mobile security, data protection, data encryption, password protection, identity and access control, wireless access control, social media usage, internet browsing control, anti-virus/anti-malware software provisioning, anti-spam procedures, anti-phishing procedures, application security, incident reporting, and above all an enterprise-wide employee training on all these issues.

Conclusion

Technological revolutions in the past have brought both opportunities and risks on the same platter. Not a single technology invented till date is absolutely free from some genuine challenges. Organizations encouraging their employees to adopt BYOD must consider the key challenges first and then devise a comprehensive BYOD policy across the organization in order to optimize the benefits of this program.

The Independent's Goof-up

It's quite hilarious that The Independent, a UK daily newspaper, that carried a political critic on India's prime minister Dr. Manmohan Singh on its website, could only able to settle the final headline “Manmohan Singh - India's saviour or just 'the underachiever'?” after faltering twice. The other two headlines were “Manmohan Singh: Saviour or Sonia's Poodle?” and “Manmohan Singh: Saviour or Sonia's Puppet?” Such a glaring editorial blunder though not uncommon in media, the pith of the problem here is internationally media houses have lost their editorial intellect. Rather a newspaper or a news channel is more like a consumer product with the shortest shelf life. You can have many versions of a story throughout the day with changes here and there. No wonder then a small-time daily like The Independent having a circulation well below two-hundred thousand deliberately modified the headline twice before taking a cue from Time magazine's cover story. And Andrew Buncombe, the Asia correspondent for The Independent and the author of this story, might not feel embarrassed at all, for “the err is human.” Journalists can commit mistakes, blunders, report misguided stories, and in the next moment come out with a rejoinder, admitting to the fact that it's “an inadvertent error.” But the politicians don't have that journalistic privilege. Any wrong decision taken by them are unforgivable.

The story may have many merits while blaming or accusing Dr Manmohan Singh given the current state of governance, but do these journalists ever question their own intellectual paucity? Whatever reported in the story has nothing new in it. It's rather a patchwork of scores of news stories published in Indian media over last few years. By the way, what's the score of Mr Andrew Buncombe, as a correspondent – ethically should be a seeker of truth? Hasn't he been stifled under pressure to overshadow the ethics of a journalist and behave “poodle” or “puppet” of management? Hasn't he ever made disservice to the profession by planting stories or blowing a story out of proportion in his life time? He might have done many times, but those are unreported, censored from the public eye. Because the mistakes of a journalist, even if reported, can't generate hullabaloo or public outcry. That hardly impacts our society. People are list interested what journalists do, how they do, and why they do. The only interest they keep in the actions of hero or villain of the story. In this case, Andrew Buncombe might have portrayed a hero as a villain and that short-lived contrast is the essential doping that many journalists have overused to give a new soprano to readers' imagination.  

The “Underachiever” Conundrum

The man who has been lauded long for his epochal economic liberalization in India is finally burning out his last trace of fuel. The gargantuan thrust once achieved by him in a time when India was struggling hard with economic devolution has of late lost its sparkle. Perhaps that's the ubiquitous pattern of any economic progress irrespective of geography. But the Time magazine's Asian edition has taken a deeper dig at Manmohan Singh and flaunts its next cover with a photograph of Manmohan Singh coupled with a funky title “The Underachiever” and a more flaky subtitle “India need a reboot. Is Prime Minister Manmohan Singh up to the job?” And that has as if pronounced the gospel of god, the entire media circle and politicians from the Opposition have gone berserk on a normal political commentary of a magazine that aspires to penetrate further during a time when the print magazine industry is receiving a tight competition from its digital and electronic siblings. There is nothing unusual in this piece though. Whatever reported there is nothing more than the essence of myriads of reports on the prime minister published in Indian media during last couple of years. Two things that catches up instantly are the intent and the timing. Though Time is a popular magazine for its unusual coverage and fantastic research on any subject, the usual sin with this media as well is a passion for circulation and undoubtedly that prompts the editorial team to pump in offbeat stories week after week relentlessly.

It's true that India is passing through a turbulent economic phase and for that matter all other countries whether developed or developing are experiencing the same pain due to global recession. The US, the UK and the entire Euro zone, Russia, Brazil, and China are on the same bracket as far as macroeconomic indexes are concerned. So what really prompts the Time magazine's editorial team to zero in on Manmohan Singh is another media scoop. Historically, the Time magazine has a culture to weigh “timing” above the “issue”. Here the issue is about economic fledgling, widespread corruption, and policy paralysis in India. And this hasn't erupted overnight. It's a long process and one wrong decision begetting another. So why then Time has chosen July 16 issue of Asian edition to carry this bomb? Certainly, it's more about the opportunism and like hitting the iron while it's hot. The Time's editorial team has been observing deeply on the economic slowdown of India for a long time and now that it senses the boiling point of commoner reactions is reaching the peak, it chooses the opening of pandora's box. That's a media strategy often used by all and sundry. Although the message is clear and circles around hard facts, the intent is otherwise. Time is no different either.  

Can Dr Manmohan Singh do the magic again?

Who doesn't know the growth story India achieved during early nineties when Dr Manmohan Singh joined the cabinet as finance minister? Scenarios then were different. The foreign currency reserve was in a complete disarray (a mere $1 billion), balance of payment was a huge problem, fiscal deficit was nearly 8.5 % of GDP, current account deficit was close to 3.5% of GDP, and the license raj was at its peak. India was just dolloped with crisis and more economic crisis. Dr Singh along with then PM Narsimha Rao focused on a major agenda – economic liberalization. Despite immense opposition from political and bureaucratic circles Dr Singh paved the path for privatization. From a socialistic economy to a capitalist one, India has achieved a lot in these two decades of transformation, but this transformation is not complete yet.

What Dr Singh achieved in those five years as finance minister has overshadowed his role as prime minister. As a prime minister, his achievements are not worth mentioning except civil nuclear deal. In the last eight years he had hardly intervened in the financial matters and the results are thrown on the face. Both P Chidambaram and Pranab Mukherjee have failed to influence the sentiments of FIIs. The reason: coalition politics. This has just propelled huge corruptions in the system.

With Pranab Mukherjee leaving the MoF and racing for presidential poll, what's more pertinent now for Dr. Singh is to first keep him insulate from the effects of coalition politics. And literally he should behave like a superman and forget politics for sometimes. Instead he should first move FDI bill for the retail and insurance sectors. Similarly, FDI in agriculture, infrastructure, telecom, civil aviation, and media should be opened up. At least the foreign investors can come forward to invest hugely in these sectors. And of course there in an inherent problem in our system – the bureaucratic hurdles. To transform India to the next economic superpower, we must do away with absurd business procedures. That could be possible only when PM will act in tandem with other ministries. Let's see how our PM is playing his magic wand.