Distance Education (DE) is one of the fastest growing forms of education in the US, as well as in other several countries. This format is currently available for undergraduate, postgraduate and professional training courses. This methodology is strongly supported by technology.

Would you like to become an online teacher? Check out our Hotmart Tips video on this subject!

However, in addition to the traditional video classes, the main form of teaching in this model, you can also incorporate other DE tools to the courses. They complement teaching and facilitate student learning.

Would you like to learn more about the subject and include some of these technologies in your lesson planning? If so, read on!

Why you should use DE technology

The advance of technology made DE possible. From the popular telecourses in the 1990s and 2000s, the classes recorded on video that could be assessed by students in different locations and times.

The internet facilitated this dynamic even further and provided other DE tools to complement the classes.

Below are a few advantages of including this methodology in your course.

Have an automated diagnosis of your students

The monitoring of students is still one of the major De challenges. Knowing the performance of all students simultaneously by means of automated reports is one way of doing this.

You can develop your own app or obtain participation data in forums or social media groups and thus, understand not only their performance, but also student level, their main questions and have insights for topics that should be covered in the following classes.

Customize teaching

Another advantage of investing in alternative DE tools is that you can customize the teaching process.

By offering different learning channels, students can choose the one with which they feel more familiar or find it easier to learn.

Ideally, these platforms should be used in such a way that each student can choose the path they wish to follow and still, that they all achieve the same result.

Combine different educational resources

Video classes are still the main DE resource.

Many students who opt for this methodology attend classes at home, where they are prone to various external influences: a phone that keeps vibrating with notifications from friends; noisy neighbors; a pet that wants attention all the time.

Therefore, offering more than one platform that can be accessed individually without requiring long periods of attention is one way to circumvent this situation.

In addition, the most used tools are already part of students’ daily lives, such as blogs, emails and online games.

What are the 4 DE tools?

Now that you’re familiar with the advantages of investing in DE tools to complement the teaching process, check out below four of them that can be used.

1. Social Media

It’s common for online courses to provide areas for comments, thus creating discussion forums. They are visible to are participants and end up creating engagement among the students, which is quite interesting for the good progress of the course.

However, another way of doing this and further encouraging more student participation and interest as a community is the creation of groups on social media, especially Facebook and WhatsApp.

The main tip here is to have clear rules for using this channel: the topics covered must be within the universe of the classes, respect must be upheld and so on.

If you have any questions, Facebook provides support for the creation of groups. Searching about Community Marketing can also be a good idea to know how to properly manage them.

2. Blogs

Blogs are a great way to provide content that assists in the learning process of the topic covered in the classes, especially because they contain a wide variety of formats: texts, images, videos and even gifs are recourses that can be used.

In addition to complementing the classes with educational content, blogs are an interesting option to ensure your online presence while promoting the courses.

If you have never managed a blog, don’t worry! They are several platforms that make this possible, and most of them are free.

WordPress, for example, is one of the most used blog web hosts. It has an intuitive layout, in addition to allowing different adaptations to the provided templates.

Investing in this DE tool is worthwhile!

3. Email

Unlike the other DE tools that were presented here, email is a platform that can help in a more personal and direct communication between teachers and students — and not between teachers and the class, or among students in the class.

You can use two strategies here:

1. Create email lists and send more general and automated emails;
2. Send personalized and well thought out emails during each student’s learning stage.

For the first option, you can forward blog links with the content related to the topic covered during the last class, for example.

The second technique however, must be directed to a more personal contact. Write your students and ask them what they think about the course, ask for feedback regarding the classes and ask about their main questions.

In short: show them that you really care with their learning process.

4. Online games

Gamification is a good bet in any type of education. It removes some of the burden off from the learning process and helps people acquire knowledge in a light and fun way. This applies in the same way with DE.

We know that developing your own app takes time and money. Even so, you can include and encourage the use of existing online software and that have some kind of affinity with the universe of your classes.

Let’s suppose that you teach languages. How about encouraging your students to download Duolingo?

This is one of the world’s most downloaded application in terms of language teaching. In it, you can add friends and create groups.

This is just another DE tool capable of encouraging interaction among the members of a class. Pretty cool, huh?

How to grow in the DE market

Distance education has been gaining increasingly more members around the world. There are many professionals who look for online courses in order to train and professionalize in their fields.

If you want to ensure your success as a teacher, you have to consider DE tools to offer interesting and interactive classes.

How about reading our post on how to create an online video course? If you have any questions, leave us a comment below, okay?