A Course Platform: How to Integrate It into Your Work
Today’s teachers and tutors have many tasks besides teaching itself: how to organize continuous online learning and their own remote work, how to keep up with new methods and tools for their subject, how to give feedback on time, and so on. Special course platforms help manage most of these processes. They usually combine features for teachers and students, simplify routine tasks and offer interesting interactive learning tools.
If you have your own school, need modern teaching tools or are looking for a foundation to start your education business, we recommend getting to know interactive platforms for creating online courses. With them you can organize continuous online teaching: from creating your own program and course format to giving students feedback.
We have already looked in detail at what an online course creation platform is, its advantages and how to choose one. Below we look at how to integrate such a system into your work.
Contents
1. What interactive course platforms offer
1.1. How to start teaching on a course platform
1.2. How to integrate an interactive platform into your current teaching
2. Interactive learning platforms: how to create a course without experience
2.1. Using a platform for teachers: the example of TalkEn.Cloud
3. Tips for teachers planning to use course platforms
Modern course platforms let you create a product from scratch or integrate your current teaching into the system to improve and diversify learning
What interactive course platforms offer
Whether you are creating your own educational product from scratch or have long been teaching with a proven method, online course platforms will help make learning more modern and interesting. Here is what such systems can give you:
- adaptive learning: interactive platforms ensure uninterrupted online learning and let you offer different schedules and lesson formats;
- visualizing information: with various presentations, animations, interactive tasks and other visual elements, course platforms can help students better understand the rules and features of a subject and study in varied ways;
- self-paced learning: students can learn new material at their own pace and come back to it whenever convenient, which makes learning more flexible and convenient;
- varied teaching: course platforms usually let you combine text with video lessons, audio recordings, interactive exercises and other formats for variety and better understanding;
- progress monitoring: interactive platforms can generate reports on students’ performance, achievements and weak spots, which lets teachers and students track progress and respond to needs;
- gamification: game elements are used to boost students’ motivation and make learning more interesting;
- access to up-to-date materials: some interactive platforms offer ready-made, professionally developed materials and textbooks, tests and exercises for students of different levels;
- feedback: many interactive course platforms let you leave feedback on exercise and test results, helping students understand their mistakes and improve their knowledge.
Overall, interactive platforms let you improve and diversify the traditional approach to learning, making it more accessible, interesting and effective.
How to start teaching on a course platform
Once you have chosen an interactive platform that fits your goals and needs, you need to structure your program, organize your work properly, test the features and so on. The steps depend on the system’s features and your program. Basic points to consider before launching a course on an interactive platform:
- create a teacher account;
- create a new course in the system: upload or choose ready-made textbooks, or divide theory and practice materials into lessons or modules, and add interactive exercises, tests and homework;
- generate a lesson schedule;
- if you already have a list of course students, create their profiles and form groups.
If your course uses audio and video in lessons, prepare the recordings in advance and provide text versions of these materials. The same applies to preparing tests, practice exercises and so on.
Before launch, check the course platform: its structure, materials, exercises and how accessible the features are. After launch, analyze how things are going and get feedback from students. Use this information to improve future courses.
Remember that your first course may be a test for you, but over time you will be able to improve your skills and approaches to teaching on an interactive platform.
Prepare the structure, materials, exercises and extra resources, create the program and be sure to test the course platform before launch
How to integrate an interactive platform into your current teaching
If you already have an established teaching process and need to integrate a course platform into it, think through the steps in advance, for example:
- testing the features and training teachers: students and teachers need to understand and be able to use the course platform’s features, so it is important to test the features and tools before you start and, if necessary, write instructions;
- planning the material: decide which parts of the learning material are best presented on the interactive platform, for example video lessons, homework, testing and so on. They should be interesting and suit the group’s age and level;
- transferring data: create study groups and student profiles, schedules, an electronic grade book and so on on the platform;
- monitoring and assessment: set up ways to track students’ activity. This can be monitoring attendance, the percentage of correct answers, test completion and so on. Provide appropriate feedback and assessment of their progress on the interactive course platform;
- ongoing support: also remember technical and teaching support for teachers and students. This will help solve possible problems and questions about using the system.
Some time after introducing the course platform, you need to analyze the results. Evaluate its impact on learning, how convenient the system is, how engaged students are and how well they are doing, and collect feedback. This will help you develop strategies for further improvement. Successful integration of an interactive platform takes planning, preparation, support and constant analysis to achieve better learning results.
Course platforms simplify teachers’ work and make learning more modern, varied and interesting
Interactive learning platforms: how to create a course without experience
Even with lots of teaching experience, plenty of ideas and your own vision of the perfect course, it can be hard to create an online education project from scratch. You need to consider many things: from the idea and checking demand for it to launching an interactive course platform and optimizing it. How complex and fast the process is depends on your needs, topic and the scale of the product. Here are the basic steps for creating your own online courses:
- defining your target audience;
- analyzing competitors;
- choosing the structure and format of learning;
- building a team;
- choosing an online course platform and tools for your work;
- developing programs and selecting learning materials;
- testing the system;
- marketing, launch and optimization.
If you have no experience in creating courses, difficulties can arise at different stages. Interactive platforms make the path easier. Modern systems have a simple, intuitive interface and accessible tools for creating courses from scratch, even if your experience in this area is limited. Some offer ready-made programs, task templates, their own library of interactive textbooks, assessment tests, and tools for communicating with students, accepting payments, promotion and more.
Modern interactive platforms let even a person without experience create and manage an educational course and improve learning
To start, compare different course platforms: features, accessibility, security, prices, scalability and so on. Before launching a course, gather all your materials and structure them, test how clear the programs are and how convenient the system is, and if necessary create guides for students on using the interactive system. Rely on your own experience and colleagues’ success stories, and use proven methods and tools to create a structured, interesting online product.
Using a platform for teachers: the example of TalkEn.Cloud
Let’s look at the features of an interactive platform for English teachers using TalkEn.Cloud as an example. It combines an LMS, its own library of interactive textbooks and professional development opportunities for teachers. No special skills or technical education are needed to work with it; teachers can use their own materials or those offered by the system.
Below we show how to use the platform for teachers in your work (video in Ukrainian).
Users of the interactive platform have their own role in the system: administrator, teacher or student. The administrator has access and tools for creating groups and student profiles, assigning one-to-one lessons and schedules, and can add learning materials and placement tests for determining language level.
Teachers on the interactive platform can:
- create lists of groups and students and schedules;
- create programs and add their own or use the offered materials and tasks;
- organize their work schedule;
- monitor students’ performance, attendance and homework completion;
- give feedback.
With the course platform, students can follow their schedule, progress and attendance, do interactive exercises and homework, and get feedback from the teacher.
In addition, the TalkEn.Cloud platform for teachers has ready-made study plans, its own library of interactive textbooks, and tests and homework exercises with automatic checking. Teachers can use the full feature set or only the LMS. There is a free 7-day demo access.
Tips for teachers planning to use interactive course platforms
Whatever their experience, tutors and teachers should keep improving their knowledge and approaches to teaching, especially if you plan to use course platforms.
First, this applies to learning how to use such systems. Some interactive platforms require you to get to know their features and tools first: before launching a course, explore the system and its capabilities, and take the introductory training if there is one.
Second, do not forget about your personal development. Moving to online course platforms requires modern teaching approaches and methods. Topical courses, trainings, webinars and master classes will help you plan interesting and effective lessons, organize your daily work, introduce various exercise formats, solve possible problems and so on.
Third, keep improving your professional skills. The better you become as a specialist, the higher the quality of the material you teach and the more interesting things you can give your students. Follow modern educational trends and make your courses on interactive platforms more organized and effective.