Online teaching is the next big thing on India’s career map with the money, time and space being for you to choose. Online teachers have a much bigger reach and students can have their personal study queries answered through video chats and white blackboards. SATENDRA SINGH tells you why an online teacher has much more scope and earning power than his offline counterpart
Online tutoring is becoming the next big thing in India as it is helping students get hundred per cent individual attention and turning out to be better for those who feel shy about asking questions in a classroom. With more and more students turning to online tutorial systems and sometimes even seeking resolution of their homework queries, the demand for Internet teachers is fast increasing. According to an Industry report, India will require at least 6 million more teachers by 2020.
Times are gone when people used to see tutoring as a part-time job option. Today, they are into online tutoring as a first and full-time job choice. The money is lucrative and more than most teachers get in academic institutions. If you are a good teacher you get more students and you earn more — simply put, earning completely depends on how much time you want to spend on teaching online.
“In the online domain, there is no limit to the earnings of a teacher or a professor. It's like a personal teaching business. Being online, it is highly scalable and a teacher can teach many more students than they can teach offline,” Kalpesh Banker, director of Edushine, explains.
In online tutoring, teachers can choose hours a week they want to teach and at what time he or she is available online. This flexibility is attracting lots of teachers to online tutoring.
“It has very flexible hours. You can decide your own schedule, whether you would want to work early morning or evening and afternoon. Even late nights are an option. This is the best thing about e-tutoring,” says Bhavdeep Sethi with the edu-portal Vedantu. He takes 5 to 8 classes a day.
“Online tutoring is giving huge opportunities to even housewives, retired teachers, or people in other professions who otherwise could not have gone into teaching. Due to the upcoming concept of online teaching they are able to do so now from the confines of their homes, Vamsi Krishna, CEO and co-founder of Vedantu, says.
However, with the space being fast taken by a bevy of online teachers, there is need to be innovative in teaching students and also choosing and assessing them individually.
“One must focus on differentiating from other online tutors. They must understand the platform and design a pedagogy which is suitable to the platform. Focus should be on using tools to analyse and measure an individual student’s learning outcomes and deliver a personalised learning experience,” Banker says.
How it works online
In online tutoring, teachers follow designed content of the platform for which they are working. “Technology helps make learning a lot more effective. I use online videos for concepts and documents for detail ideas and mock tests so that students can practise. I hold live classes for clarifying doubts. It’s a personalised approach towards each student which is not possible offline,” Sukhwinder Singh, an online teacher with WizIQ, says adding that usually for a one hour class, he charges Rs500.
“Vedantu has an online platform. My student and I log into the site simultaneously and then video chat. We can thus talk to and see each other. There is a white board on which I explain the study. The student can see it in real time and also write back on it,” Sethi tells you. As for the money he makes, he says that on an average he earns around Rs35,000 to Rs45,000 a month. “It all depends on how many classes I can take in a week,” Sethi says.
An online study environment allows teachers to reach millions of students. Students log in and study as per their needs and study schedules.
Unlike traditional teaching environments, online classes are not restricted by physical infrastructure. One is told that at meritnation.com, e-tutors teach children through live classes.
Online tutoring helpful
When one attends a coaching class offline, once the lecture is over it is over. But in online tutoring, students can replay the lecture if they have any doubts.” Also the reach of online teachers is far greater. Seasoned teachers can reach students living in a city where he does not have a good faculty.
“I live in Chandigarh and I teach students from 15 cities right now. That is a big thing for them. They can now save big time. When students go out for late night classes, parents have safety issues but in e-tutoring they at in the comfort of their home with parents watching over them,” Sethi tells you.