Online teaching is a lot more different than offline teaching. One must be prepared with all the lesson plans and subject matter as there is the least chance of retakes in online teaching. Guiding students from a distance, interacting with them and keeping them engaged require tactics and expert knowledge. Hence, if you are planning to hire an online tutor for your e-learning platform have a look at these top qualities that every online teacher should possess so that you can take an informed decision.

• Passion to Educate

There is no denying that a teacher must be passionate about sharing their knowledge with others. Hence an online tutor must not only focus upon earning an income by delivering the required lesson to the students but should have an innate urge to share what they already know. By knowledge, we do not mean curriculum knowledge but life experiences as well.  A teacher with this ability can make any complex topic appear fun and interesting to the students. Students usually struggle in tough subjects such as Math and Science and they often look for online Science tutors, Math tutors to fill the learning gap. 

• Ability to Interact

Unlike offline teaching, where only those students gather the attention of a teacher who can speak boldly and express their doubts to the teacher, online tutors encounter every kind of student, the shy ones, the silent ones, and the talkative ones. The better a tutor can interact with the students the better they will be able to explain the tricky concepts to them.  In fact, it enables the students to speak up about their doubts and ask queries without any hesitation from the tutors that they might not do so in offline classrooms.

• Adaptability

See how well a tutor can adapt to your online learning platform. Take a demo session and see how the tutor reacts with changed behavior of a student. Online Learning platforms such as Skooli, CrunchGrade offers a FREE Demo session so that a student can get familiar with the online learning environment. For instance, you can pretend to be a student and demonstrate different behaviors at different times. Ask questions, show interest or display your understanding and see how the tutor tackles each situation. Their performance will be an indicator of how well they can deal with different students.

• Sound Knowledge of Subject

No matter how interactive and adaptable a teacher is, at the end of the day, it is their knowledge and expertise that matters. Hence, you must make sure that the tutor is qualified in the same subject for which you are hiring them. Assess their technical knowledge beforehand and see how acquainted they are with the current trends of the subject. It will be much better if the tutor also holds industrial experience as they will thus be able to provide practical knowledge to the students about the subject.

• Teach-savvy

An online tutor should be familiar with learning management systems and learning content management systems. They should be willing to create online courses and organizing student data. If an online tutor holds the capacity to gain the technical know-how of the learning system that you use, it will be easier for the students to get acquainted with it.  They must be willing to help out students for every issue that they may face while taking online classes. They should be familiar with online collaboration tools such as whiteboards, Google docs, etc.

• Excellent Communication

Communication is the key to effective online teaching. A tutor, who cannot express himself eloquently, cannot teach the students in an effective manner. Online learning demands tutors to be storytellers so that they can engage students in the session. They should not only be able to communicate the conceptual knowledge effectively to the students but should also be able to build a good relationship with them so that the students do not feel hesitant in asking their academic doubts.

• Creating Digital Content

Online learning material is not all about textual content. It also includes video-based content, animation, infographics, interactive diagrams, and pictures. A person willing to become an online tutor should have knowledge of how they can create an interactive lesson plan using all these teaching aids. They should know how to divide lessons into sub-parts and organize the curriculum in such a way that students do not feel overwhelmed in a session. One can easily assess this by giving the tutor a live task and ask them to create a lesson plan on the go.

Online teaching is a rewarding process hence measure how enthusiastic a person is about teaching and making connections with students. These were 7 easy yet effective ways how you can scrutinize the hiring of an online tutor for your e-learning platform.  What other qualities do you think an online tutor must hold? Share your experience with us!