Teaching/Learning Online: "dense" lessons.

Hello, People!

I would like to start writing about teaching online and everything involved in it. 

Definitely, it is not an easy task and if you have been following my blog, you have probably seen that I wrote a book about how to open an online language school.

In my opinion, one thing to keep in mind is that online lessons are "more dense" than live lessons. 

What do I mean with "dense" in this case?

Well, in live lessons, even man-to-man lessons, there are some distracting elements such as a picture on the wall, any sound outside the room, or so. Also, the teacher may move around and it takes some time (seconds, I know) to go back to the blackboard to write something. 

During an online lesson, teacher and student are totally focused on the process. Maybe both have earphones, so distracting sounds do not influence the process. What is behind the teacher or behind the student will not change, so there are no distracting physical elements as well.

What does it mean in practice? Based on my experience, we can pass on to the student more material than in a normal lesson. Let's say that a normal one hour long lesson can be done in 50 or 55 minutes. 

On the other hand, if we decide to go for the one hour long lessons, we will be passing on 65 to 70 minutes, if it were a live lesson. One of the questions that arise is if the student is ready to absorb the extra material. One solution for this problem is to drill more, in a way that the lesson won't be boring and will correspond to 60 minutes concerning the material to be taught.

We can discuss more about this specific topic but I think it is enough to start a more general discussion.

This is one of the many aspects that teachers and students have to keep in mind when they work online.

Happy online teaching/learning!
Alex