Training is an essential part of any job. But few depend on ongoing personal development as much as teaching.
In addition to keeping pace with developments, innovations and theories in your respective fields, you also need to maintain teaching standards.
While the core principle of teaching hasn’t changed – imparting knowledge and wisdom to future generations, the approaches have.
Equally teachers and schools in general, are far more aware of their pastoral responsibilities as well as the range of challenges pupils and students can face.
This opens up a huge number of learning opportunities for teachers, as well as ways in which your career can develop.
Through CPD you can learn the skills you need to enhance your lessons and add value to the entire school.
The challenge is finding the time. Online CPD courses may be the solution to the problem.
Flexible Learning
Online CPD gives you the control over when you put the hours in. Considering most teachers are very time poor, this has a major advantage.
It means you never have to choose between personal development or being there for your pupils or students.
Nor are you putting a strain on the school by having to find cover, or asking a teaching assistant to fill in.
But it also acknowledges that you are entitled to a life outside of work. Through online CPD you can study the course a bit at a time. During lunch breaks or at the end of the day before you go home.
Or you can put in some time in the evening, it’s entirely up to you.
This is especially advantageous if – in addition to being a teacher – you have a busy home life that would otherwise make learning impossible.
Online learning allows you to work around your circumstances. It also avoids having to attend a physical class with all the complications that brings.
This is especially good news for teachers as while the school day finishes at 3.15, the work goes on well past that. Taking away the headache of having to cover lessons or being offsite for the day means you can focus on your learning.
You can also learn at your own pace. If you want to complete the course in a single day, during the summer break, you can do. If you’d prefer to chip away at the material over the course of a couple of weeks, that’s fine too.
It’s about whatever works for you – so you can get the most out of the experience.
Especially when the research suggests, the more engaged the teacher is with the course, the more value they can add to their lessons.
Course Variety
Online learning providers can offer a huge range of courses that traditional CPD course providers can’t. This is partly due to how traditional training providers operate.
They have to develop a course, pay someone to deliver it and – quite often – hire or pay for a room for you to sit and learn.
That makes the courses prohibitive to develop and expensive to buy.
Online courses – although still developed by experts in their field – aren’t delivered by a person or in a classroom setting. That means the courses are cheaper to develop, resulting in more courses being made available.
It usually means they’re cheaper to buy too.
You still meet all the same learning outcomes; you just get to choose the course that’s right for you and start learning from your armchair.
The range of courses available through online learning providers means that the opportunities for advancement are huge.
Whether you want to go improve your teaching method, your lesson plans or learn some skills to benefit the whole school, you will find a course that’s right for you.
You still get the benefit of tutor support – should you need it – but otherwise you have the freedom to just focus on your learning.
Starting your CPD Course
It may seem counter-intuitive as a teacher to study an online course, outside of a traditional classroom setting.
However, online learning lends itself perfectly to anyone who works full time and/or has a busy home life.
Because of the flexibility to learn around your commitments, it works for almost anyone’s circumstances. Moreover, you can start your course whenever you want.
You don’t need to wait for a set date or for there be enough people enrolled to make it worth the provider’s while.
You simply enrol on to the course, login to the portal and start the course.
Because the information is available on-demand, you can just study to your heart’s content. If you didn’t understand something you can just read it again. If you get interrupted, that’s okay the lesson stops when you do.
You will also benefit from the fact that your online CPD will be the most up-to-date version of the course as materials are reviewed regularly.
This again is because an online course is all digital, so there are no printed materials to update. Which also helps to keep the costs down.
When you factor in the convenience of an online learning portal and the support of a dedicated course tutor, online learning becomes very convenient indeed.
And don’t forget, online learning usually offers a flexible way of paying for the course so you can manage your finances better too.
learndirect are a leading provider of distance learning courses, offering a wide range of online CPD, teaching and educational courses for teachers.
To below view the courses available or speak to a member of our sales team who will be able to advise you further.
