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Distributed teams 101: Guide to building & managing distributed teams

The increasing focus on remote working necessitates proficient coordination between the teams located at various places. The fact that the employees are not physically present at the office premises poses various challenges for the companies and firms. Though the concept is fairly popular in almost every organization now, yet intellectual leadership qualities are needed to bring in a cohesive feeling. Termed as virtual or distributed teams, they work remotely at home or a co-working space.

In the article, we will discuss the definition of distributed teams, building and managing distributed teams, and the various pros and cons. We will touch upon the distributed team challenges and distributed teams best practices.

Content Index

What is a distributed team?
Benefits of building and managing a distributed team
How to build a distributed team?
Tips on managing remote teams
The pros and cons of having a distributed team
conclusion

What is a distributed team?

Distributed teams or a distributed team is essentially a team of employees working in an organization in a remote workplace. The workplace is their residence, any co-working space or they may be digital nomads. The fact that they are scattered in various regions of the world or a city, they are termed as distributed teams.

They communicate with the other team members or their managers through online communication mode. Audio, video and web-conferencing gain preference in their work life. They are not physically required to be present at the office locations or work sites.

Certain companies just maintain virtual offices, forgoing physical setups. They operate remotely and are surviving in the market. There are both pros and cons of distributed teams, yet their importance is quite significant, especially in reducing costs and bracing pandemic situations.

Another significant aspect of distributed teams is a mix of various skills and talents. Companies often struggle to hire employees of the same skill from a particular location. This leads to loss of customers and revenue. Remote, virtual, distributed and collocated teams – whatever name you may call them, are super beneficial to tackle this problem.

Benefits of building and managing distributed teams

The management and leadership of big, medium and small size companies and firms are slowly shifting to the new trend of remote working. They realize the potential benefits of working remotely, the key ones are:

Reduction in infrastructure and transportation costs
Leveraging the global talent pool of resources
Flexibility in the work hours
Maintain a proper balance between professional and personal lives
Reduction in anxieties, stress and tension levels
Enhancement of efficiency and productivity
Reduction in the employee turn over rates
Generates a sense of self-responsibility and accountability

The mentioned key benefits are being noticed by many companies, and the satisfaction graph of employees is on the rise. Customers are satisfied and are showing trust in the company and its employees; a win-win situation for the company, its employees and its customers.

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How to build a distributed team?

1. Hire the Best

The starting point of building distributed teams is to hire the appropriate people. The success of remote working teams depends a lot on the talents and skills of the team members. Curate your interview questions in such a way that you receive the answers to both the technical or domain aspects and the behavioural characteristics.

You may select candidates with good technical or domain know-how. Yet they may significantly lack interpersonal skills. Unless there is an acceptable balance between the two, you may struggle to manage the distributed teams. Self-motivation, dedication, good communication skills, and a positive attitude are some of the behavioural attributes that you must check. The leadership must usher in trust and confidence in their skillsets and capabilities while hiring to ensure mutual goodwill.

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2. Define the roles and responsibilities

The roles and responsibilities of the team must be defined and set clearly without any ambiguities. At the time of induction, these must be specified. Queries must be entertained and explained in concise terms to prevent any disputes later on.

You must specify the mission, vision, and objectives of the company and the team. Mention the daily activities and the mode of communication. List out the reports and dashboards that need to prepare and circulated based on the scheduled frequency. It is better to provide some online training materials or induction manuals for the remote team members.

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3. Frequent Communication

Communication is an essential weapon for geographically distributed teams. The mode of communication must be set appropriately. Certain meetings or sessions mandate video calls whereas some may cater only by audio calls. Depending on the brevity of the situation, a decision needs to be finalized on the communication medium.

A robust and effective communication mechanism ensures proper coordination and management of the teams. The team members stay connected and can feel being part of the organization. The company leadership must encourage both professional and personal space of communication. The employees are re-charged and re-fueled after the day’s work and do not experience mental isolation.

4. Correct tools and technologies

Distributed teams require robust tools and technologies for constant collaboration and communication. Negligence may amount to difficulty in managing and coordinating between the teams.

Technology has undergone major advancements in the modern era. Various tools, software, and applications are available in the market, facilitating remote working. The team members can virtually connect, collaborate, and engage as and when needed. You need to decide and invest in the correct systems and application, beneficial for both the teams and the organization.

5. Appreciations

Employees working remotely need to be constantly motivated and inspired for better efficiency and productivity. The fact that they are isolated at a remote workspace must not creep into their minds. That may lead to a reduction in their output and quality of work.

A good and recommended method to generate constant enthusiasm is to reward or appreciate them in the form of monetary compensations or gifts. Their performances must be recognized and treasured. These methods boost up their confidence level, encouraging them to work for the betterment of the company. They gain trust and confidence in the company and feel a part of the family.

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Building an efficient and motivated team is key to the successful execution of a project or program. Hence if you invest initially in achieving the same, the result will be positive.

Tips for managing distributed teams

1. Regular scheduled meetings

Managing geographically distributed teams is challenging. Yet if you conduct regularly scheduled meetings, then your life is more or less stable. Daily status checks and progress details are needed either through audio or video conference calls. Risks and hurdles must be discussed and solutions provided. If any team member needs support for technical, domain, infrastructure, or even HR-related issues, those aspects must also be discussed and deliberated upon.

Ensure all the meetings have a specific agenda with time limits. Do not overshoot the time as that may unnecessarily hamper productivity. Daily meetings must be short, focusing on any specific risks or hurdles. Weekly meetings can be a progress check. Monthly or fortnightly meetings can be to work on the next set of actions or plans. Unremot helps you to create a virtual office enabling one-tap video calls, instant messaging, easy screen sharing, and much more. You can organize your tasks and activities smoothly, without any hassle.

2. Set Performance Metrics and goals

Key performance indicators or KPIs not only help to measure a company’s success but also an individual’s performance levels. It is good to set the goals and measurement metrics at the beginning before initiating a project or a program. The team members will be aware of the goals and objectives they need to fulfil. Metrics will guide them to their future career and achievements.

KPIs and goals motivate remote professionals to focus on their activities and tasks. They remain dedicated and inspired to meet the deadlines. The quality and efficiency of work improved significantly. It leads to a win-win situation on both sides. One of the most effective tips for managing distributed teams.

3. Promoting social interactions

Remote, virtual, distributed, and collocated teams operating out of various regions do not imply that they are supposed to execute like machines. Even they need bandwidth flexibility, time to leisure and vacations, and interpersonal connections. Hence you must promote social meetings and interactions maybe once or twice in a week. a great way to do this is by facilitating and encouraging virtual watercooler interactions.

The best ways are to conduct quizzes, online games, chitchats about hobbies or personal interests, etc. between the members. It brings in several benefits. The employees feel refreshed, their brains supercharged, and bonding between the team to work together. The team members develop confidence and trust with the company’s management and feel at home. Through Unremot you can collaborate effectively and efficiently using their state of art tools and software.

4. Mutual agreement on work schedules

One of the distributed team challenges is maintaining the time zone and work schedules. The geographically distributed agile teams need to synced up accordingly. It is better to club time zones as per their proximity and then plan the schedules.

It is good to agree at a consensus on the work schedules at the beginning to avoid any kind of issues. There can be situations wherein you need to conduct a common meeting or discussion between all the members. An expectation must be set consciously on such occasions for a definite time. It may be an evening for someone, and it may be an early morning for someone. You need to percolate the same among the team for agreement.

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5. Be result-oriented and not time-oriented

Forcing remote professionals to maintain a scheduled time every day is not desirable. It may result in dissatisfaction and resignations. The basic purpose of professionals preferring to work remotely is flexibility in timing. You must focus on the results and objectives. The teams must also be guided to follow the same.

Communicate the objectives and results expected from each member along with the deadlines. They may work at any time of the day, but the results must be met. You may enforce some fixed hours for availability in phone and emails, rest you must leave at their discretion to complete the work. As long as the deadlines are met, you must trust them.

6. Create a virtual work environment

Email communications are not always reliable. Constant checking of emails is not recommendable. It results in the deterioration of productivity. Besides, it invites distractions. If your inbox is flooded with emails, you may struggle to sort and find out the required ones.

To avoid such situations, it is good to maintain a virtual workspace with provisions of file sharing, chatting, instant messaging, screen sharing, etc. The remote team members can exchange documents, discuss with peers or managers and even seek clarifications or support as and when required. Unremot provides all the benefits at your fingertips.

7. A Random Check on the Progress

In addition to daily meetings and status checks, you must occasionally check on the team members. It can be just a random call or video conference. Not only it helps to verify the progress of the work, but it provides assurance on the motivation level of the members.

You can leverage these checks to ensure the members are satisfied and happy with the work environment and the management. It is better to enquire about their health and mental state too. Proactively ask for any problems or issues and volunteer to guide and assist in sorting them out.

8. Transparency

Remote professionals expect transparency from their managers. The work culture, expectations, remunerations, health benefits, leaves must be communicated clearly to them. The reporting hierarchy must be conveyed so that they understand whom to report and who are present in the ladder higher up.

This information helps them to understand their position in the company and assist in shaping up their aspirations. They gain trust in the management and leadership of the company. They remain dedicated and focused on their work. It is one of the important guidelines when it comes to distributed teams best practices.

What are the Pros and Cons of distributed teams?

The concept of Distributed agile teams comes with both advantages and disadvantages. Pros are a boon, and we must strive to utilize them to be more productive and efficient. Cons are the awareness that needs to be seriously dealt with and tacked with intelligent solutions.

The Pros of having a distributed team

Flexibility in work hours ensures a balance between personal and professional lives. Motivation levels are higher up. Efficiency boosts up, and productivity shoots up. Remote professionals are happy that they can take care of their kids and family while being full time in a job.
Access to a pool of talented and skilled resources spread in different zones of the world. You can leverage them without being bothered about locating similar skills from a city or a state. The problem of resource shortage is resolved, allowing you to operate smoothly and efficiently.
Reduction of infrastructure and transport costs is one of the greatest advantages of operating remotely. The more you reduce expenditures, the more you can invest in strategic opportunities. It positively impacts your revenue figures.
Work disruption is minimal in remote operations. Office locations may face hindrances due to physical calamities or technical faults. That may halt several operations of a company, resulting in an unrecoverable loss. Remote working will reduce the occurrence of such situations.

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The Cons of having a distributed team

Requires constant check on the motivation levels. Interpersonal attributes are a necessity along with the technical or domain know-how. The remote professionals need to collaborate and engage with a positive mindset to bring in team harmony.
Constant check on the work progress is anxiety. You need to constantly rely on verbal confirmations and written progress reports. Physical checking on employees will be limited except in video calls.
Communication and collaboration platforms and applications have to be robust and efficient. Else you may land up in misunderstandings and unnecessary troubles. Urgent calls or messages may be sometimes difficult to handle. You may land up in a situation of not being able to access a team member during emergencies.
Settling disputes between team members may be troublesome. You can only engage them together in a phone call or video call. In certain situations, face to face interactions is effective. Hence there might be cases it will be time-consuming to arrive at a mutually conclusive solution.

Companies must now dedicate their attention to building up a strong and effective circuit of distributed teams. The challenges or cons can be easily overcome if you follow the tips shared in the article.

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Conclusion

I hope by now, you have understood what is a distributed team? You have gained insights into the ways and techniques to build up a dependable distributed team. Modern-day technological advancements are facilitating the governance and management of distributed teams smartly. More and more people are on the lookout for remote jobs. The count of digital nomads is on the rise. It is good to harness the skills and extract the maximum benefits by hiring remote professionals. You can brace the market with dignity and agility.

admin

Why can’t I focus at work and how to fix it?

Remote work

Focusing on work is essential to accomplish your activities as per the stipulated deadline. Absence of dedication leads to unfulfilled tasks, a severe hamper to our future growth. Yet sometimes we struggle to concentrate, impacting our daily jobs. Work keeps on accumulating, leading to anxieties and worries. Professionals and entrepreneurs are often in a dilemma with a common question ringing in their minds – Why can’t I focus? They look for ways to fix their problems.

In the article, we would perform a detailed analysis of Why you can’t focus at work? And provide you guidelines on What to do when you can’t concentrate.

First and foremost, you need to understand the signs that indicate the inability to focus. Once you are sure and convinced that “I can’t focus on anything”, you need to investigate the underlying problem. The next step is to apply the methods or techniques to increase the concentration level.

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Content Index

Indicative signs of inability to focus
Why can’t I focus?
What to do if you can’t concentrate?

Signs of Inability to Focus

Check for the signs enlisted below, while you are at work. The signs indicate a lack of focus, concentration and attention.

Inability to remember or recollect incidents, activities, data or record
Struggling to find an acceptable solution to design, project, problem, risk, etc.
Frequent mistakes and errors in your daily activities and tasks
Lack of sleep and a constant feeling of tiredness
Reduced appetite
Feeling stressed and overburdened with work
Constantly anxious about failing at work
Loss of energy and enthusiasm in completing the tasks
Unable to complete the activities as per the mentioned deadlines

If you are facing the above conditions, then you need to think on why can’t I concentrate seriously? And what to do if you can’t concentrate?

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In the next section, we will discuss to help to answer the above two questions.

Why can’t I focus?

1. Inadequate amount of sleep

Sleep is an essential factor in recharging the human brain. Human beings cannot work 24 hours a day. The brain and the heart need to rest and relax. Sleep is the fuel that charges them up, ensuring they are proficient at working as per their capacities.

Insufficient amount of sleep leads to lesser time for relaxation for the human body and mind. This results in lack of concentration, dizziness, anxiety, and stress. They affect the brain and the heart, leading to lethargy and burnouts. Your body fails to tune into the regular time schedule of activities. You fall behind your deadlines. Lack of Adequate sleep is an important factor when you are struggling to understand – “Why can’t I focus?”

2. Distractions

People who work remotely often face the problem of distractions. It can be personal life, medical emergencies, or any unforeseen circumstances at home. Social media addictions play a significant role in distracting people from their work. Constantly attending phone calls and answering emails are some of the factors of distractions. We seldom realise the harm caused by these circumstances. Our lack of realisation forces us to ask the question – Why can’t I focus?

In the modern world, smartphones and social media interactions have become almost part of our life. Our personal and social lives are benefitted a lot. Yet we fail to understand the harm they are causing to our professional environment. Hence when you really bothered with – Why can’t I concentrate? Look behind and check the time spent in non-value added activities due to the distractions.

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3. Lack of planning and organising

If you think that you can note down your tasks on a paper and start executing them, you are committing a grave mistake. Simply listing down your activities even in a laptop or desktop will not increase your efficiency. You may end up working on fewer priority activities, neglecting the important and crucial ones. Your productivity will go to a toss, without you even realising the same.

Without a proper plan of priorities, set timelines, and arrangement of resources, you will find yourself stressed out and overburdened with your tasks. You will constantly struggle to cope up with the deadlines. Your brain will soon burn out, leading to unnecessary health issues. It will soon result in physical and mental imbalance. A big answer to your question on – Why I can’t focus at work?

4. Less Physical Movements

Aspiring professionals seldom suffer from serious misconception. They feel working 12 hours a day constantly without any breaks will boost up their effectiveness and productivity. They plan to finish their activities ahead of the due dates, hoping to either increasing their revenue figures or over satisfy their customers and managers.

The end result is the deterioration of physical health. Your body will experience muscular stiffening, backaches, and many other ortho and cardio-related ailments. The dream of a bright future career will be drastically affected. Neither will you be able to earn customer satisfaction, nor will you be able to gain trust in your company.

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5. Cluttered Work Space

Imagine your workspace scattered with papers, stationaries, devices etc. Every day you struggle to search out the items required for your work. You may able to squeeze them out from the cluttered desk. But do you realise the harm it is causing you in your daily routine?

Even if you plan out your activities in a planner, you will soon realise a substantial amount of time is spent in arranging the resources at your desk. Unknowingly, you will start losing out the deadlines in your to-do list. And missing deadlines slowly will increase your stress levels. Your laziness and lack of discipline in maintaining a clean and arranged desk will soon pay its price. A very crucial factor when you are desperately trying to work out on – Why can’t I focus?

6. Less food and increased dehydration levels

Focusing on work and neglecting the food nutrients and the associated beverages are a serious concern affecting the young professionals and entrepreneurs. On the above to shorten the time of food intake, they often indulge in fast food. Staying awake for long hours is a fascination, prompting them to depend on caffeinated beverages.

The absence of nutrition and minerals in the body badly affects the immune system and the metabolic rate. Slowly you become the victim of harmful bacteria and viruses. Ailments and illnesses start attacking your various organs. Similarly reduced intake of drinking water will lead to dehydration, impacting your flexibility and muscle movements. Basically, one of the key criteria of your analysis on the question – Why I can’t focus on anything?

7. Multi-tasking

Modern working trends force you to indulge in multi-tasking. It may resonate a feeling of investing long hours in accomplishing such objectives, neglecting all other aspects of life. Many of us are not aware of the definition of multi-tasking. It does not imply simply clubbing few activities and execute them in parallel. For example, what if you compile two activities that require a similar percentage of extensive analysis and research? Will you be able to achieve both with the same efficiency? The obvious answer is No.

If you engage in multi-tasking without analysing the tasks to be combined and worked upon, then the results will turn out to be disheartening. The work quality will not earn accolades. Your efficiency meter will start deteriorating. You will fail to achieve your desired objectives. The result is dissatisfaction, disappointment, tensions and worries.

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8. Interest Deficiency

Pursuing a job that is prevalent in the market may help to earn and grow. But it will lead to negative results unless you have the required interest and zeal to accomplish it. Hence you need to strike the appropriate balance between your passion and trending jobs. This exactly is one of the very valid reasons trending among the young generation professionals on their question of – “Why can’t I focus?”

Lack of interest may lead to avoidance and delay in completing the work. The quality is hampered significantly. As a result, the productivity quotient starts diminishing. You fail to achieve your objectives and in the way, hamper your future career.

By now, you must have acquired a fair amount of idea on your first question of – “Why can’t I focus? The next section will aid you in overcoming the anxious question and further assist you in answering your second question – “What to do when you can’t focus?”

What to do if you can’t concentrate?

1. Physical Exercise

Strengthening body muscles and joints is essential to increase flexibility. Right body movements bring in agility and fitness. Sitting constantly at the work desk brings in rigidity and numbness. Daily physical exercise assists in maintaining body health. It can be in the form of yoga, meditation, gym exercises, walking, running, jogging, or cycling. Breathing in the fresh air along with it is an additional boost.

The occurrence of body pains and backaches are reduced. You can enjoy working with a fit and healthy body. It is recommended to include a dedicated time every day in your planner for exercise. This will help you in overcoming your anxiety on “Why can’t I focus?” and fix your problems easily.

2. Sufficient amount of Sleep

Daily 6 to 8 hours of sleep is mandatory for an adult, depending on your stress and health conditions. Plan your activities in such a way that appropriate time is set aside for sleep. Sleeping early at night is crucial for a healthy body. Your mind and brain need relaxation. As we mentioned earlier, the refuelling of the brain is vital.

Your brain is recharged to think and act on your tasks at hand efficiently. Your work quality improves. Efficiency and productivity level enhances. You feel rejuvenated and re-energised. Hence if you are wondering why I can’t concentrate and how I can fix my issue, here is your solution.

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3. Create Planners

Planners play an important role in organising your tasks and executing them as per the mentioned deadlines. Numerous online applications and software for creating planners and to-do lists are available. You can select and leverage them; some are free to use, and some offer free trials for later purchase.

Rank your tasks as per the priorities and complexities. Assign the timelines for each of the activities. The planners help in tracking the progress for each activity and task. It is recommended to include your activities too in your list. You can balance your personal and professional lives simultaneously. Professionals and entrepreneurs must follow planners judiciously, a helpful solution to their problem on “Why can’t I focus?”

4. Eliminate Distractions

If you are working remotely at home, you need to set separate time for your activities. Expectations need to be percolated within your family members and friends about your work schedules. Similarly, if you are operating out of your work premises, you need to ensure you are not distracted by too many phone calls or emails.

Social media distractions have to be completely avoided at work. You must limit to emergency calls only. Your concentration level will increase. The work completion time can be maintained. Efficiency, productivity, and quality of work will be enhanced.

5. Nutritious Diet

Your body needs essential minerals and vitamins for functioning effectively. Diet with appropriate nutrition must be consumed every day, along with an adequate quantity of water. The metabolism rate is maintained, a sign of a healthy body. The various body organs function appropriately, eliminating illnesses and harmful diseases.

A healthy body helps you to focus on your work, positively impacting your work quality and effectivity. Intake of fruits, vegetables, nuts, carbohydrates, minerals, vitamins, and water are all beneficial for maintaining brain and body health.

6. Clean Workspace

Maintaining a clean and arranged workspace assist in completing your work as per the scheduled timelines. The files and documents must be arranged in appropriate folders and racks. They must be categorised for easy search.

Besides, a clean workspace has a positive effect on the human mind. It keeps you refreshed as you start your day at work. Many neglect this factor, but if you try once, you can feel the difference it brings into your work life. One of the very important solutions to your problem on – “Why can’t I focus?”

7. Personal Life

A mind clubbed with personal anxieties and worries struggles to focus on professional activities. It leads to constant deviation from your scheduled activities, hampering your timelines. You will witness difficulty in creating innovative solutions, leading to the poor work quality.

Maintaining a healthy personal life is essential to focus and concentrate on your work. Speak with your family and friends frequently, maintain a healthy social life and attend gathering and parties. Play with your kids and engage with them. Walk your pets once in a day and snuggle them. These actions help in refreshing your mind too.

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8. Seek your work of passion

Engaging in jobs or business that generates passion within you and motivates you to work ahead is vital. It will encourage you to concentrate on your work and think of interesting solutions and ideas. Your zeal and enthusiasm will potentially rise. Achievements will mount up. Your future growth will be enhanced.

Dedicate time for yourself, and your interests. Listen to your heart. Venture out to find a space for yourself and your passion. You can find a ready solution to your problem with “Why I can’t concentrate?”

Conclusion

We have discussed the vital factors affecting our focus and concentration levels. Along with it, we have understood how to mitigate them leveraging some important tips and methods.

It is recommended to follow the suggestions diligently to ensure a work-life full of interesting aspects. It will substantially boost up your inspiration level as well as that of your team and colleagues. Eventually, you can rise high up in your career and achieve your desirable wins.

admin

How to Write a Personal Statement for a Teaching Job – 7 Step Guide

Education

When you’re applying for a new teaching job, you want to do everything that you can to impress your future employer. You want them to see your potential and understand why you’d be such a good fit for the job. Luckily, your personal statement can help you show them exactly that.

A personal statement is your chance to leave that unique mark on your application and make it more memorable. It will help you stand out from the rest of the candidates and show your personality. All you have to do is know how to write it. Don’t worry, because we’ve got you covered. Keep reading to find some of the best tips on writing a personal statement for a teaching job.

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Let’s break it down together.

1. Write For a Specific Job

First things first, each personal statement that you write needs to be written for a specific job that you have in mind.

That means that you shouldn’t have one generic personal statement and send it out to all teaching job openings.

Instead, you need to rewrite it paying attention to:

The job description
Type of work it requires
Type of skills they’re looking for

After you analyze the job description, you can start brainstorming and getting ready to write your personal statement. Adjust it to the job description, and it’s going to have more success than you expect.

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2. Share Your Education & Experience

Your personal statement should include your previous education and experience that you’ve had so far. But, since you’ll be sending your CV as well, don’t go into too much detail in this part of the personal statement. Make it short and mention,

Formal education
Professional experience
Skills you’ve acquired

You can make it a one to two-sentence introduction since it’s a more technical part of your personal statement. Then, you can move on to a more personal level.

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3. Share What Drives You

Every potential employer wants to see the passion and drive in their candidates. Since you’re applying for a teaching job, it’s very important that you show your love for the job.

A teacher needs to be motivated and ready to walk the extra mile just to reach all their students.

Therefore, make sure that you cover the following:

Why you love teaching
How you first started doing it
What makes transferring knowledge so special for you
What is it about this job you’re so passionate about

Tell them why you love teaching and just how passionate and motivated you are to wake up every day to a job you love. This will make sure they recognize you as a potentially great employee.

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4. Why You

Now it’s time to distinguish yourself from all the candidates that will apply for the same job. There could be tens and even hundreds of them applying.

So, why you?

There’s nothing wrong with distinguishing yourself from the rest of the candidates and saying why you are the obvious choice.

Make sure that you share:

Your vision for this job opening
The contribution you’d make
The opportunity it would give you to show your skills and talents
The specific reason why you would be perfect for it

Don’t just say, “I’d be a perfect fit for this job.” Instead, share something more specific like:

“Thanks to my year working with children with special needs, I learned how to be patient and adjust to the needs of every student.”

Give actual examples and make this section the strongest one in your personal statement.

5. Show Your Personality

A personal statement gives you the chance to show your personality and help the hiring managers get to know you better.

Unlike a CV, which is more technical in terms of structure and content, a personal statement makes room for you to be yourself.

Make sure that you:

use everyday language
show our personality
add your spice to it

Don’t make your personal statement too reserved or uniform. Instead, make it more about you and tailor it to fit your personality.

This will impress hiring managers and potential employers.

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6. Make it Short

A personal statement needs to be short yet powerful.

If you make it too long, it will seem like you think too highly of yourself. Also, you might come across as unprofessional and unable to distinguish the most important facts they want to hear.

This is why the length and structure of your personal statement plays an important role.

Here’s a couple of rules to follow:

Keep your sentences short
Make every word count
Avoid fluff words
Be to the point
Keep the whole thing up to 600 words long (unless they specifically require a different length)

Make sure your personal statement is informative and packed with valuable information. Don’t waste any words on making the sentences sound poetic.

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7. Watch Your Accuracy

Finally, before you turn in the personal statement, you have to ensure you’ve written it like a true academic worker.

As a teacher, your writing accuracy is highly valuable and will be appreciated by the hiring managers. That’s why you have to check your accuracy.

That implies:

Proofreading
Editing
Removing any spelling or grammar mistakes
Adjusting your vocabulary
Checking sentence structure

You can use one of the writing services if you need help with this, and polish your personal statement to perfection.

This will show you’re educated, professional, and detail-oriented.

Final Thoughts

Writing a personal statement for a teaching job is a process that requires some strategic planning and preparation. You need to make sure your personal statement is unique and shows you in the best possible light.

Use the tips we’ve shared above to write a killer personal statement for a teaching job. Make sure you submit a memorable statement that will help you outshine the rest of the candidates.

admin

Amazing Tips to Standout for a Memorable Job Interview

Education

An interview call’s something that every job seeker is eager to receive, regardless whether they’re fresher or have adequate experience. You’ll around for jobs and select the best ones that suit your career objectives. This clearly implies that you need to impress the interviewer with your etiquette, work experience and skills, academic qualification as well as soft skills. All this would definitely sound like a difficult task.

However, there’re several simple ways to stand out for a memorable job interview. And all it requires are some extra efforts. To standout for a memorable job interview, we first need to understand what a recruiter is seeking from a candidate.

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Point Interviewers Look From Candidates

Several years ago, the primary focus of an interviewer would be to discuss your educational qualifications and work skills. Over the years, the interviewing system itself is getting more complex and sophisticated. Here’re some points that interviewers look from a candidate.

1. Etiquette

Corporate and business etiquette is something that most employers look for nowadays during an interview. They closely observe your manners to find out how you would deal with junior, peers, seniors, as well as business associates and customers.

Corporate and business etiquette is not something you can acquire overnight. It requires years of practice and experience. Usually, an experienced jobseeker will clearly display business and corporate etiquette. However, the going could get tough for a fresher.

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If you’re a fresher, try and learn somethings about business and corporate etiquette and their importance through websites and YouTube videos. They’re also a few short online classes that train you to incorporate and business etiquette that’s available on e-learning portals.

2. Body Language

Your body language can betray your thoughts. A good and experienced interviewer will note your body language during an interview. Generally, they’ll do this by asking questions you wouldn’t expect or aren’t prepared for during an interview. These could have something to do with your education and career objectives, work experience or skills.

The way to greet the interviewer, seating style, how you hand over documents, respond to questions and your overall demeanour including eye contact, signs of nervousness or anxiety, excitement all takes into account.

Here I would suggest you be as natural as possible. Never follow tips such as smiling at the interviewer since it looks sheepish. Or appear too eager or anxious to create a good impression. These usually prove counterproductive.

3. Career Growth

An interviewer will not ask you about your career growth during an interview. However, they’ll check these through details on your Resume or Curriculum Vitae. If the Resume or CV indicates you’ve been switching jobs but got better positions or even promotions with a single employer, it clearly signifies you’re serious about the career and doing your best to grow.

Therefore, an interviewer will try to identify and ask what’re your personal and career objectives behind seeking the job. They’ll also try and find out how long you would serve the employer and what it takes to retain you at the job. No employer wants to lose a good worker. They also want to avoid bad hires for obvious reasons. Therefore, your career objectives are something every interviewer would want to know.

Contemplating Career Change? Here’s all you need to know

Tips to Standout for a Memorable Interview

The three points I mentioned above are something every recruiter without exception would look from a job seeker. Therefore, prepare for these carefully, regardless of whether you’re applying for the first job, seeking a higher position or pay or a better career prospects in every way.

To impress one or more interviewers is the first step towards getting that offer letter. Therefore, it’s extremely important to have an interview that’s memorable for the interviewer and you as a jobseeker.

1. Best Use of Time

Making best use of the interview time is the first and most important tip to stand out and have a memorable interview. Typically, the duration of an interview is between 10 and 30 minutes, depending on whether you’re a fresher or experienced jobseeker. In some exceptional instances, though, the interview could stretch for an hour too.

Hence, an interviewer or a panel of interviewers have limited time to judge whether you’re suitable for the job and worth employing. You can actually help them make best use of this time by providing precise, to-the-point responses to every question. Pack your answers with a lot of information. This leaves no room for ambiguity and doubts in the minds of one or more interviewers.

Time Blocking: All you need to know about this powerful technique

Providing exact and precise, information-packed answers mean you’re enabling the interviewer to make the best use of the limited time. This is very useful to standout and have a memorable interview experience for all- the interviewer and yourself.

2. Highlight Skills over Experience

A common mistake that most jobseekers commit is mistaking skills for the experience. The two are entirely different. Skills imply your capabilities to handle and perform certain tasks that an employer requires. Experience is usually the number of years you’ve been using these skills or doing a specific job. Therefore, highlight your skills over experience.

Usually, every employer looks for certain work skills while filling a vacancy. Use the interview time and questions to highlight your skills that would prove useful to the employer rather than experience. That’s because you could have long experience but not adequate skills and vice versa.

Leadership Skills | Developing leadership skills at workplace

By highlighting work skills, you’re actually creating a memorable experience for the interviewer and yourself. If an employer needs your specific work skills, they’ll remember you as a candidate and shortlist your name for the offer letter. In fact, the better you highlight the skills that an employer needs, the greater your chances to get the job.

3. Response v/s Reply

Renowned American motivational speaker and management guru, Dr Stephen R. Covey has a famous quote that says: “Most people do not listen with the intent to understand. They listen with the intent to reply.” Unfortunately, that’s true about most jobseekers. They do not listen to the question or statement made by interviewers and comprehend it fully. Instead, they merely listen to the question to reply.

What happens? When you don’t fully comprehend or understand the question or statement, it’s clear that you’ll provide an answer that doesn’t satisfy the interviewer. Worse, it leaves a very poor impression. Actually, a memorable interview is all about creating and leaving behind a good impression. Therefore, a quick reply instead of response can harm your efforts to impress an interviewer.

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Take time to fully understand the question and comprehend what an interviewer is looking for. Never rush to reply. Instead, pause for a few seconds and give an astute answer that provides all the details that an interviewer is seeking. Doing so makes your interview memorable.

4. Showcase Soft Skills Too

Superb communications, problem-solving or troubleshooting, team-play, leadership qualities, abilities to stay calm during crises or emergencies and high sense of responsibility are some vital soft skills that employers want to see in every candidate. It’s easy to showcase them provided you take some extra efforts.

It’s not possible to tell you about your soft skills to an interviewer. Therefore, the best way to showcase soft skills is by writing about them on your Resume or CV. Mention memberships to any clubs, professional associations, alumni and social service organizations.

Also, include successful projects that you’ve executed as an intern during studies or as an intern and trainee. If you’ve been able to solve tricky problems at the workplace or in the society, mention them on your resume too.

Instead of speaking about these soft skills directly, mention them while you’re responding to questions about your work experience, skills and educational qualifications. Generally, these are three topics on which an interviewer would definitely ask you some questions. As I mentioned earlier, use the time to provide information-packed answers. Therefore, load some information about soft skills too in your responses.

Best resume software | Give the finest first impression

5. Speak about Mutual Benefits

Remember, you’re at an interview because something about your Resume or CV could catch the attention of an employer. Or else, why would they waste time, effort and resources on interviewing you in the first place? However, most candidates wrongly believe the employer is doing them a favour by calling for an interview.

To stand out and have a memorable interview for the recruiter and yourself, speak about the mutual benefits of hiring you. Clearly define what you can bring to the table and what you expect in return. It’s not rude or impolite to speak about your own benefits with an interviewer.

However, you also need to bear in mind the benefits an employer gets by hiring you. Therefore, show how hiring you would serve the employer’s business goals. And what benefits you can get or expect by playing the role.

Virtual Icebreakers | How to have smooth first remote meeting?

6. In Conclusion

One key fact to remember is that an interview is a two-way dialogue or discussion between the employer and jobseeker. Overall, an interviewer wants to find whether you can meet the needs of the employer or the organization. The same way, you also need to utilize an interview to know whether it suits your professional and personal objectives.

admin

How to prioritize tasks and excel at work place

Remote work

Professionals belonging to any industrial sector or domain face the challenges of multi-tasking in the competitive modern world. Most maintain planners and task lists to keep track of their progress. But do all know how to prioritize task? Well, it’s a million-dollar question. You can inquire about any individual and will be amazed to observe curious looks of dilemma and confusion.

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Among the many factors that result in efficient productivity, prioritizing tasks play a significant role. You may be under the notion that all your tasks are important and crucial. Then what are the genuine reasons for conducting a prioritization activity? Over and above, how do you determine top priority among the multitude of activities? The article will provide you with all the answers to your questions.

We will talk about why prioritizing tasks is vital for success and growth and how to prioritize tasks at work. There are various prioritization tools available to support and supplement the activities, we will discuss them too.

Why is it important to prioritize tasks?
Tips on how to prioritize tasks?
Prioritization tools or method
How to manage short term and long term priorities?
How to prioritize tasks that repeats?

Why is it important to prioritize tasks?

Market and customer demands along with long time survival, drive companies and firms to increase their productivity above others. They are under constant stress to strive for the competition. The pressure is cascaded to every department and employee working in the organization. It happens among individual business owners and firms as well.

8 Simple ways to organize your life

Unless you adopt the prioritization skills and segregate the tasks, you may not be able to align your progress towards the desired objectives. Classification of urgent and less important is a very much essential part of the planning and organizing in a professional environment. And it has to be done daily, even weekly or monthly for smooth and seamless execution of jobs.

The focus must be on completing the tasks of higher value and greater impact. The inherent results of such an exercise are remarkable and noticeable. Productivity boosts up, and goals are met as per the desired metrics and results, performance factor increases, objectives are achieved, and so on. Professional and personal life balance is well maintained. Trust and confidence with internal and external stakeholder enhance, leading to greater satisfaction and higher revenue. In the end, your future growth is positively impacted.

Tips on How to Prioritize Task

Prioritization brings in mental peace and relaxation, minimizing worries to complete tasks as per the stipulated deadlines. Sharing some useful tips on how to prioritize task:

1. Create a List with To Do Activities

The first step is to create an exhaustive list of all the activities under your radar. All strategic, tactical, and operational tasks must be listed, none to be ignored. It is advisable to record your tasks and activities too. In such a manner, you can maintain your entire day, week, or month efficiently. The list must be constantly checked and updated each day to ensure you capture only the relevant tasks. Eventually, you will stay organized and updated on the upcoming tasks. You need not rack your brain every time, trying to remember the daily activities.

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2. Prioritizing Tasks

The second step is how to prioritize tasks at work. It is insane to think about accomplishing all activities in parallel. The tasks need to be ranked from higher to lower to fulfil them while meeting the desired deadlines. Some tasks are urgent and demand early completion. While others can wait to be finished at a later period. You need to understand the urgency and complexity simultaneously while deciding the rank. The best way is to ask a few valid questions:

Which tasks are urgent for the company or the customer?
What is the outcome or result of the task?
When do I need to finish the task?
What happens if I fail to achieve the timelines?
Is there any potential risk in completing the task?

Important Fact: Always add buffers to handle contingencies and delays due to unavoidable circumstances.

3. Numbering or Ranking the Tasks

You can select a ranking or numbering mechanism for your tasks. It may be via numbers 1,2,3 etc. or A, B, C… etc. Either way, you have to define the meaning of each of them and set them against each task. The basic formula for categorization involves segregating them based on urgency and significant value or return for money. Typical prioritizing list examples involve:

Very High – failure to complete may severely impact business and customer satisfaction; a reversal may not be feasible.
High – tasks with higher value, and significant importance, earning potential revenue or fame
Medium – strategic projects impacting the growth of business or company in the long term, resulting in significant visibility and earning
Low – tasks that do not have a direct impact on the business functions or customer can wait in the queue for completion
Very Low – optional activities, can be taken up when one has relaxed bandwidth

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4. Fragmenting Big Programs into Multiple projects

Handling big programs and breaking them into multiple projects for easy execution is the quality of a program or project manager. You can manage and monitor your work well, and prioritization is easy and convenient. Sometimes projects are also subdivided into smaller sections for better management. Each subdivision is assigned a deadline and progress tracked at the lower level. It is a realistic approach for accomplishing big programs or projects, paying due attention to each task.

5. Timelines and Effort Estimation

One of the important aspects of how to prioritize work is time management. Unless you are capable and proficient enough to set the proper deadlines and hours/days required, the entire prioritization activity will fall apart. You need to estimate the hours to be dedicated each day for a task and then calculate the entire effort. Keep some buffer before fixing the target completion dates. Do not overcommit, resulting in unnecessary stress and reduction in quality. You need to maintain a balance between efficiency and quality.

Here are a few tips to assist in setting deadlines and effort estimation. It will answer your anxiety on how to prioritize the task.

Club similar tasks for rationalizing efforts and time
Anticipate risks behind each task and calculate the effort accordingly
Sequence the activities and check which can be executed in parallel
Keep space for personal work
Place fillers to key in any feedbacks on previous work

Leadership Skills | Developing leadership skills at workplace

Prioritization Tools or Methods

Here are some prioritization tools and methods to help you organize your tasks.

1. Leverage Apps for creating your To-Do List

The traditional method of creating a To-Do List was utilizing the pen and paper or a whiteboard. In recent times, the internet is flooded with applications that assist you in creating To-Do List online. The applications have several facilities of shifting the tasks in the rank of prioritization. You can even defer the tasks using the apps. Kanban Board is a prominent and useful application for maintaining tasks and activities.

You can break down your tasks into multiple sub-tasks and maintain a daily or weekly or monthly schedule as desirable. The online applications provide excellent user-friendly drag and drop facilities for modifying the To-Do List and planner.

2. Utilize Technology to rank the tasks

Ranking the tasks is a mammoth activity. If you sit and shuffle through pages of To-Do List activities, you may find yourself in total dismay. The other big issue is scheduling the duration of each task. Opening a calendar and then trying to calculate the hours is tedious.

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The best way is to utilize various online time blocking applications. The apps provide the calendar beside the tasks listed in the system. You can drag and drop the dates and calculate the estimated completion duration. Once done, you can sort out the tasks based on their importance and time required. They help to track the progress of your tasks by calculating the time invested. The best is they have in-built intelligence to suggest breaks in between activities for personal benefit and health. Some of the key time blocking apps are Week Plan, Plan, and PomoDone.

3. Priority Matrix

We all know about Stephen Covey and his famed time management matrix. The US-based educator and keynote speaker had gifted to the world of professionals and entrepreneurs an intelligent quadrant. The four-quadrant or matrix suggests creating two columns for Urgent and Not urgent category and two rows for Important and Not Important category crisscrossing the columns.

The benefits of using the matrix are to list down

tasks which need to be done mandatorily – Urgent and Important
tasks which can be planned for an acceptable duration – Not Urgent and Important
tasks that can be delegated to a team member – Urgent and Not Important
tasks that can be eliminated for later consideration – Not Urgent and Not Important

You can easily solve your problem on how to prioritize task by leveraging the efficient and smart quadrant suggested by Covey.

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4. Deciding the Important Tasks

After ranking the tasks, the next big question that may crop up in your mind is how to prioritize your time? For that, you need to select the tasks that are most important among the ranked ones. You need to understand the bandwidth for each day and assign the tasks to yourself accordingly. The tasks that you select for accomplishing in a day turn out to the most important or preferred tasks.

The exercise is necessary to prevent excess burnouts. One must not be under the notion of completing all the urgent and important tasks in a day. Hence along with ranking, time management is important. There are not tools specifically available for it, and it is essentially a theoretical method that you need to ponder upon. The method effectively must answer your question on how do you determine top priority among the scheduled high ranked tasks.

5. Stay Focused

Focus and attention are very important when you are really struggling to understand how to prioritize the task. Deviation to social media notifications, browsing through unrelated websites, and diverting mind towards personal activities are not desirable. It hampers your productivity, and the prioritization activities turn out to be a failure.

Henceforth, if you want to be serious on how to prioritize work, concentrate well. There are a few apps that can assist you in increasing your focus. The widely used ones are Chrome extensions called Momentum and StayFocusd. They are given free with Chrome and can be installed easily on your laptop or desktop. You can block unrelated websites to prevent distraction. The extensions remind you of your activities, the moment you open a new tab or a new browser window.

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6. Use the Pareto Principle

Vilfredo Pareto, a world-renowned economist, had devised a unique principle called the Pareto Principle. The logic is to illustrate the relationship between the inputs and outputs of a process or activity. It’s an 80-20 rule; the definition being 80% of the consequences of a process is derived from 20% of the causes. The principle is quite popular and a good answer to the question of how to prioritize the task.

You need to find out how can you achieve 80% of the outcome from 20% of your tasks. You need to calculate the returns from your work to arrive at a conclusion. To explain the effective utilization of the Pareto Principle, one of the prioritization list examples can be that of event management. When organizing a business event, marketing and promotion are the key strategies for success. Hence you need to consider these two activities as 20% of your work, eventually providing you proper customer engagement and revenue.

How to Manage both Short term and Long term priorities?

A typical work schedule of a professional or entrepreneur involves both short term and long term work priorities. Managing both of them is a question asked my day, a typical query being how to prioritize my day with both types in my work bucket?

Short term priorities or tasks are easy to accomplish, as they have lesser effort estimates. Whereas long term priorities require proper planning, management, organizing, and estimating the duration. A few tips will guide you in effectively handling both the priorities with ease:

List down the success criteria
List the tasks and activities
Schedule the dates based on a priority ranking
List down the resources required to fulfil each task
Break down tasks into sub-tasks and set milestones accordingly
Anticipate challenges and risks and work out on the mitigations and resolutions
Seek advice and guidance as desired
Delegate tasks as feasible
Track the progress of each subtask
Plan buffer for delays and feedbacks
Be ready for an alternate plan in case the primary plan fails to work out

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How to prioritize the task that repeat?

Certain tasks are repetitive and recurring. You may wonder how to prioritize your time to handle such tasks. Segregate the recurring activity from the rest one time tasks. Break down the repetitive activity into smaller processes. Determine the frequency of each sub-process – daily, weekly, or monthly, etc. Estimate the duration required for each. Allot a fixed time as per the frequency to execute the tasks. Ensure your planner or To-Do List holds them as per the recurring schedule.

A few tips to save your time and effort in such jobs is to design templates. It subsequently helps in prioritizing more activities in the To-Do List. You can also leverage automation tools to aid in delivering repetitive jobs. In a way, it enhances your productivity and answers your question on how to prioritize my day.

Hope you have acquired sufficient information on how to prioritize task efficiently and with convenience. Enjoy working!

admin

Best online course platforms 2021 | How to design your online course [Bonus Content]

Education

Online learning platforms have gained substantial popularity due to the increased reliance on remote education. To get the best out of your time & money it is mandatory to select the best online course platforms.

In this article, we will elaborate on the best e-learning platforms and their key features. The online learning platforms equip educators and academic institutes with the resource and tools for creating intuitive online courses. Your needs may be varying. Some may require frequent usage of online video courses. Others may need only hosting and selling online courses, whereas some prefer interactive courses. Therefore it is essential to review each of the online training platforms and judge the best usage for your business.

Also read: Microlearning 101: What is it and how to use it?

Content Index

How to select the best online course platform?
How to design an online course?
Best online course platforms

Best Online Course Platforms 2020

Thinkific
LearnWorlds
Teachable
Podia
Click4Course
Kajabi
LearnDash
Ruzuku
Academy of Mine
WizIQ
SkillShare
Udemy
TalentLMS
Udacity
Alison
OpenSesame
Digital Chalk
PathWright
Zippy Courses
AccessAlly

How to select the best online course platform?

Provision to conduct quizzes, polls, questions and answers, games and projects
Accessible from various online and mobile devices like desktops, laptops, tablets, mobiles
Features enabling interaction and collaboration among the students like instant messaging, chats, sharing of documents
Support of various content types like PowerPoint presentations, word documents, excel sheets
Ability to impart instructions via videos, webinars, streaming, simulations

The above features are the key ones that you should look for in the online training platforms for crafting a robust learning management system.

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How to design an online course?

Before proceeding into the list of best online course platforms, let us understand the steps for creating an education platform:

1. Firm the objective of the course

Students and learners primarily focus on understanding the learning objectives before registering for a course. Hence it is essential to state the purpose concisely and clearly without any discrepancies. It also helps the learners to judge the outcome and the benefits. While setting up the objectives, you must not ignore the fact that online courses are meant to fast pace the learning.

2. User-Friendly Interface

The education platform must be user-friendly, easily accessible, and navigation convenient. It is the best way to gain the interest of students and learners. Searching for the courses, duration, and mode of learning must be available easily on the UI for the participants. Registering for the courses need to be self-guided with proper instructions and explanations.

Also read: 21 Best Online Teaching Tools | For Better Virtual Teaching

3. Planning and Organizing

This is a crucial step in designing online courses. Since the classes are attended virtually in remote locations, the content must be precise yet containing the required logic and facts. Providing inline videos and hyperlinks is an effective method to engage the students. Use cases and real-life examples are preferable options to attract participants.

4. Enable self-guided and learner-enabled training

Learners avail online courses as per their convenient time and duration. Many prefer self-guided learnings at weekends or out of office hours. Therefore it is essential to provide different learning modes and methods.

Also read: How to cultivate self-directed learning? | Definition, Strategies, Models

5. Interactive content

Interaction between participants is the critical success criteria for an online course. You must ensure the contents are supported with images, gamification, quizzes, and audio. The students gain interest and turn out to be effective in knowledge enhancement.

6. Assessments

Assessments and exit tests are important to judge the progress of the students and learners. The feedback helps to understand the strengths and weaknesses for further enhancements. You can design questions, quizzes, and tests and provide evaluation scores.

Also read: A Teacher’s Guide To Formative Assessment Strategies

7. Certifications

The majority of the learners prefer attaining certifications after completing a learning course or program. If you can provide the same through your platform for online classes, then you can invite more registrations from the students. It is good to build up a partnership or affiliation with any recognized university or institute or education board. Authentication will provide the students with additional confidence in the courses.

The Best Online Course Platforms

1. Thinkific

Considered as one of the best e-learning platforms. It is quite popular when it comes to creating and selling online courses. Its key features include:

User-friendly front end interface for easy navigation and usage
Tools and resources for selling content via email marketing
Provision to provide certifications
Supports creation of unlimited courses and training programs
Ability to create different pricing plans and educational packages
Embedded Templates for selecting and designing the course content and assessments
Integration with almost more than 1500 apps for email, payment, campaigns and many more
Easy to send marketing brochures and social media notifications
You can either opt for a free trial or register in their monthly plan

Also read: Best Online Gradebooks | Free and paid grading software for teachers

2. LearnWorlds

Very popular as one of the most interactive and best online education platforms. It provides all the facilities to create, sell and promote online learning courses. Its key features include:

Drag and drop facility to create course content templates with ease and comfort
Embedded e-commerce platform for selling online courses to prospect learners
Integrated marketing tools for reaching to the targeted audience
Provides course building academy and facilities to conduct live virtual classes
Ability to attach videos, online assessments, documents, ebooks, accessible to students during the course programs
Free trial provision coupled with a monthly pricing package

Also read: How to be a better online teacher | Best practices for teaching online

3. Teachable

Teachable is considered as one of the best online course platforms, similar to Thinkable. It offers the best marketing facilities for selling and promoting your online courses. Its key features include:

Ability to customize your website through their repository of designs, templates and themes
Provision for granting certifications to the participants
Facilities to conduct quizzes and assessments

When it comes to comparison Thinkific vs Teachable, one is strong at design and themes while others have robust features for marketing and campaigns, respectively. Both consist of robust resources and tools for creating online learning courses. There might be slightest differences in the features. It is advisable to perform a comparison of Thinkific vs Teachable before deciding on the right platform for your business.

Also read: Virtual Field Trip | Take Your Children Around The World

4. Podia

One of the best online course platforms, providing easy usage facilities and assisting in for a well-designed course structure. Its key features enlisted below:

An excellent user interface, with provision for customizations as per your preference
Provision for placing your sales widgets on your web page
Facilities to add membership and also coupons for added discounts and benefits
Easy to access and search learning courses
Integrated with various social media platforms and other marketing tools for campaigns
They offer a free trial and a monthly plan too

5. Click4Course

One of the new and best online course platforms competing with market leaders. It offers similar interesting features and has gained quite popularity among the learners. Some of its key features include:

Facilities to create unlimited courses under multiple categories
Supports different types of learning modes like audio, video, PowerPoint presentations, etc
Provision to conduct surveys and tests
Ability to create certificates for the respective courses
Generating analytics and reports on the course performance and learners’ progress

Also read: How to improve student motivation? | Effective strategies

6. Kajabi

Considered as one of the robust and best online course platforms. Compared to other platforms, its pricing is a bit higher, but its facilities are amazing. It has earned the trust of millions of online businesses and educationists. The key features are:

Easy to use templates for course design
Embedded pricing, membership and subscription facilities
Integrated with the social media and marketing platforms for the promotion
Convenient e-commerce platform for selling your online courses
Provide real-time insights, analytics, and reports on your performance
Accessible in all mobile and smart devices

7. LearnDash

One of the best-integrated platforms for online courses. Its fully integrated with WordPress and is considered to be very reliable and secure. Its key features:

Special drip-feed content allowing automatically delivering the desired content as per the pre-defined schedule
Easy selling of courses based on the selected pricing model
Provision for certificates and badges
Facilities for interactions with students through chats, instant messages, surveys, feedback, quizzes
Provides forums to the members for discussions and consultations

8. Ruzuku

Easy to use online course software and platform. Instructors and teachers are preferring it due to the convenience and comfort it offers in designing the courses. Its key features are enlisted below:

Facilities for configuring subscriptions, and coupons
Easy access to unlimited courses
Capability to embed streaming facilities, videos, audio in the content
Ability to use powerpoints, images, PDF and word documents for the course materials
Students can create their profiles as part of their membership programs
Dashboards and reports providing learners’ progress
Marketing tools and resources provided for promotion

Also read: Classroom management 101 | Techniques for regular & online classes

9. Academy of Mine

It is considered one of the best online course platforms when it comes to personalizing the learning programs. Medium and small education businesses mainly prefer to leverage this platform. The key features are:

Robust analytics and dashboards for tracking performance
Effective marketing tools and resources for promotion
Accessible in all mobile and smart devices
Serves multiple industrial sectors for their learning management
Provision for live virtual classes, webinars, self-paced learning

10. WizIQ

They are pioneers in providing facilities for live virtual classes and online video courses. Its key features are:

Customized creation of virtual classrooms
Provision for online course creations
Facilities to conduct tests and assessments
Embedded e-commerce platform for selling online courses and learning programs
Analytics and dashboards for real-time performance and progress insights
Creative learning templates and themes for course design

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11. SkillShare

Their main objective is to build up a professional environment in the learning world with creativity. Its key features are enlisted below:

Unlimited online courses on various categories
Forums for students to discuss and deliberate
Course planning and organizing is easy and convenient
Feedback and assessment of the learners’ progress can be shared easily
Facility to select courses revolving around the latest trending technologies and subjects

12. Udemy

Udemy is one of the most popular and best online course platforms. With its huge number of instructors, students, and online courses, it dominates the marketplace. Its key features include:

Creating videos with multiple lectures
Easy promotion of the online courses and learning programs
Provision for marketing through emails and campaigns
Facility to create unlimited courses under a wide array of categories

Also read: What is your teaching philosophy? | Writing your philosophy statement

13. TalentLMS

A cloud-based online course software and platform. It is easy to use and does not require any high-end technical skills. Some of its key features are:

Facility to conduct webinars, online courses, and training programs with ease
Ability to post quizzes, surveys, and feedback
Provision for granting certifications to the participants
Provides capability for interactive content creation through images, infographics, video and audio facilities
Integrated with various marketing tools for promotion and campaigns

14. Udacity

If your motive is to create technology courses, then Udacity is the best platform for you. It has a rich category to select from like Artificial Intelligence, Cloud Computing, Autonomous systems, and many more. Its key features are:

Guarantees creation of certificates for the learners
Surveys and feedback mechanisms were provided for collecting comments from the students
Templates, themes, and categories were provided to design the online courses
Equipped facilities for virtual classes as well as self-paced learning

Also read: What Is An Adjunct Professor And How To Become One?

15. Alison

Alison is a free and easy-to-use online course platform. The courses are offered under various categories like Health, IT, Science, Humanities, Marketing, and many more. The key features are enlisted below:

Supports multiple languages like English, Italian, Spanish, French
Easily accessible from any region in the world
Provision to create courses for certifications, diploma,s and various other learning paths
Facility to conduct courses for specific jobs or to enhance career skills

16. OpenSesame

Suited for Corporates and considered one of the best online course platforms. It supports multiple courses, categorized under various heads. Its key features are:

Facility to conduct webinars, presenting white papers, ebooks and case studies
Courses are offered based on industry, product, role or by regions
Provision for a free trial followed by monthly subscriptions
Provides instant messaging and chat facilities

Also read: 10 Best Online Whiteboards For Better Remote Meetings

17. Digital Chalk

It provides a unique feature by supporting the SCORM model. The full form being the Shareable Content Object Reference Model. You can create your online courses offline and then import them into the platform. The other features include:

Offers various formats for designing your online courses
Provision for conducting instructor based training, online virtual classes or self-paced learning
Create your brand with logos and images for marketing and promotion
Ability to track the progress of students
Real-time insights into performance through analytics and dashboards

18. PathWright

It is one of the best online course platforms when it comes to distance learning. It has a huge database of instructors, learners, and courses. Its key features are:

Superb design templates and themes to select for designing online courses
Provision to embed case studies and real-life examples into your course content
Use interactive modes for content in the form of video, audio, etc
Facilities for surveys, feedback, question and answers and discussion forums
Free trials followed by various monthly plans to choose from

Also read: Best Pomodoro App 2020 | All About Pomodoro technique & how to use it

19. Zippy Courses

A good to use platform for selling online courses. Its key facilities and features are enlisted below:

Drag and drop facilities for creating a well-designed content
Set pricing plans for the courses as per your preference
Provision to modify the enrollment dates
You can schedule the release of your content
Email notification facilities for sending across to students as reminders

20. AccessAlly

The platform is well integrated with WordPress. It provides all the features to facilitate the selling of online courses with ease and convenience. The key features are :

Provision to create high-end course material and content with embedded video, images, audio and infographics
Create pricing plans and memberships for the online courses easily
Provision for offering group licenses or enrolling into bulk courses
Tracks the progress of the students through dashboards and analytics
Helps in creating affiliate dashboards and commission structures
Facilities for robust marketing tools and resources for promotion

Also read: How to become an Instructional Coach? | Instructional coach jobs 2020

Once you have selected the online course platform, you must register and start designing your courses as part of the free trial programs. Once you are comfortable with the tools and software and satisfied with the performance, you can try the monthly plans.

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