An educator’s life can get overwhelming at times with the visibly never-ending list of tasks that demand attention every single day. From analyzing formative assessment data and lesson planning, to keeping up with professional development requirements and managing a classroom—it’s no wonder a recent article by The Guardian stated that record levels of stress have been putting teachers at breaking point of late.
Stress is one of the greatest-known enemies of productivity at work. By implementing simple changes in your routine and forming new habits, you can increase your productivity manifold and hone your organizational skills—which directly translates to increased peace of mind.
Here are a few simple yet effective productivity hacks that can help today’s professors scale their careers faster and succeed in the current teaching landscape.
1.) Leveraging State-of-the-Art Technological Solutions
Most educators who use technology are people who see continuous growth and change as a fundamental part of their profession and are willing to swim against the tide of conventional operating procedures. However, to achieve large-scale shifts in standard educational practices, many more educators must alter their pedagogical approaches and embrace modern technological solutions to streamline their schedules.
There are a number of such solutions available in the market today. For one, leveraging audio-to-text transcription can greatly help teachers explore areas that need improvement on their part and save a whole lot of time from their busy schedules. Seeing the words you speak, rather than just hearing them, can provide a fresh perspective on your teaching style.
Similarly, today’s learning management systems provide evidence on course behaviors. A fully developed system can track student engagement and activities in an online class. The richness of data is helpful for universities and colleges to correlate student success with class components so that they can design classes suitable for each discipline.
Teachers can also leverage mobile technology to teach since learning through mobile apps has shown to help students enhance their classroom experience due to improved personalization. Educators can also access supplemental resources through these apps, which further ameliorates knowledge delivery.
2.) Using Collaboration Tools
Collaboration is really all about people coming together and working toward achieving one common goal. As a teacher, collaborating with students and other teachers for a specific project or task goes a long way in ensuring not only that everyone partakes but also that the target is met even with the absence of staff or students as such individuals can make an input remotely.
Teachers can easily create accessible courses to boost student engagement with the help of these tools and share their work at varying levels. Students and teachers do not have to be physically present to work or give the expected input. For schools with different locations/branches, students of the same class can work on the same project as long as roles/expectations are clearly defined and the teacher in charge can track progress and see which student made what input.
Some of the different types of collaboration tools available for teachers today include:
- Calendar Sharing Tools
- File Sharing Tools
- Document Synchronization
- Cloud Storage
- Video Conferencing
- Whiteboards.
3.) Repurposing Content
Believe it or not—any content that you’ve already created can be repurposed. This repurposing can mean anything from posting the first lecture of your course to YouTube to draw a new audience, or reading a blog post out loud and uploading it to SoundCloud.
Time management is one of the most important attributes when you are a teacher. and inefficient planning can often lead to stress. Repurposing content can aid teachers in handling stress since they can come up with solutions swiftly. Looking for new materials and content every time can be a rather daunting task.
You should feel free to build upon what you might have found or created at some point in the past: this is where creative innovation can happen without all the extra time being spent trying to create something new every single time.
You can also look up open educational resources online to find relevant content and then give it your own twist or build your lectures around it.
Finally, it is important that you balance out work and life to keep from feeling burnt out.
Time and again, studies have shown that exercising regularly or practicing meditation can help you keep a positive outlook on life, further increasing mindfulness and decreasing stress. Engage in any activity you like on a daily basis—be it cycling down the streets, playing a certain game, or just going for an evening walk in the park. Do whatever makes you happy, and do it often.
After all, a healthy mind is the greatest treasure one can ever find!
See also:
- Beyond Discussion Boards: Applying Interactive Tools and Assignments for Learning
- SEL Workshop: Bite-Size Strategies You Can Use Right Away (webinars and blogs on social and emotional learning)
- Bringing Student Success Online with Films On Demand and Credo Reference: Webinar
- Staying on Track and Even Enjoying It: Creativity, Productivity, and Success at Work
