5 Tips for Teaching Math Online

Jun 08, 2021

5 Tips to Help You Teach Math Online


While teaching can be incredibly rewarding, it's also one of the most challenging careers—even before COVID-19 forced you to start teaching online. This last year has been full of bumps in the road as teachers, parents, and students alike have worked to navigate the world of online learning. When it comes to teaching math specifically, there are some things you can do as a teacher to make things a little easier.

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Use Derivita

Just as you teach your students to use the right mathematical formulas and theories to solve any given problem, the tools you use to teach your students must be right for the job. If you aren't using Derivita already, you could be missing out on an incredibly helpful tool. Derivita's capacity to integrate with any learning management system from Canvas to Schoology, and the ability to work with any textbook, makes assigning and grading homework so much easier. Are you concerned about starting up with a program you won't need in life after the pandemic? There's no need to worry. Derivita has solutions for in-person assignments as well as online ones. It provides students with immediate and targeted feedback that can assist them in the learning process. Derivita’s SpotCheck tool assesses student performance in real time while encouraging class participation. Derivita comes packaged in a user interface that’s extremely user-friendly for teachers and students. All in all, Derivita makes teaching math online and processing online math homework much easier for you.


Develop Online Learning Activities

You may have planned some learning activities to help students grasp the concepts you were trying to teach. The value of those activities isn't diminished just because you started teaching online instead of in person. Because not all of your planned activities will translate as well when teaching math online, you may need to spend some time developing new learning activities or adjusting your existing ones so that they work in this new format. Remember, these activities can help keep your students actively engaged in the learning process, a critical component of online learning that is only made more difficult by having the entire internet at their fingertips as soon as their attention starts to wander. The best activities are structured to provide student-to-student and student-to-teacher interaction, encouraging immersion and participation and enhancing the learning experience.


Leverage Free Online Lectures

Unless you're that one-in-a-million teacher whose students are always hanging on your every word, students probably get bored in your class from time to time. Shake things up a bit by taking advantage of free online lectures from other educators. They may use a different approach than you do on the same subjects, which can help students grasp concepts by looking at them from another perspective. If you notice that your students are receptive to a different approach or activity, you can take notes on the tactics that seem to be working best and incorporate them into your teaching methods down the road. Clearly, these lectures have the potential to be a valuable resource for both you and your students.


Take Full Advantage of Your LMS

When it comes to teaching any subject online, having one place where you can keep all of your materials for every class can go a long way towards simplifying the teaching process. That's the purpose of a learning management system or LMS. Given the sheer volume of materials you need to teach math online, having an LMS is an absolute lifesaver. It's the perfect place for discussion boards, rubrics, your syllabus, and any videos, courses, or documents you use for teaching. You can use it to track attendance and to create and administer tests as well. With an LMS, monitoring student progress and performance becomes much more straightforward, and editing your materials becomes a breeze. If you want to make teaching math online as easy as possible, this is one tool you definitely want to be taking full advantage of.


Make Yourself Available to Answer Questions

One of the benefits of an LMS is the ability to receive feedback from students. Whether you communicate via your learning management system, email, or some other method, it's important to make yourself available to answer students' questions. You might even consider setting aside standard office hours during which students can contact you. That way, students know when to reach you, which facilitates better communication between you and your students. Set aside time every day to respond to the questions you've received. Your students will appreciate your efforts, and they will benefit significantly from the direct support and mentoring they can get from you. 


Teaching math online can be a challenge, especially when you're accustomed to teaching in person. The good news is that there are many resources to make online teaching easier for you and online learning easier for your students. While no one solution is likely to be perfect, there are bound to be untapped resources to make online learning a better experience for everyone. Examine the resources available to you and experiment to see which ones meet your needs as a teacher and the needs of your students. By putting yourself in a better position as a teacher, you put your students in a better position to learn.


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Additional Resources

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