So You Want to Start Teaching Online…
For years, I had potential workshop participants asking…no, begging me to create some online classes. I would always appease them, saying I was working on it. Truly, I was ‘working on it’, but really only working to get my head around the idea of it. At the time, I was teaching 10-12 in-person workshops a year and always trying to make those the best classes I could make them. For me, the interaction and engagement with the students, actually feeling the creative buzz in the room, was what drove me as well as the the students themselves. Many times, I would react to the students needs, in other words, ‘read the room’ and change the lessons/schedule to accommodate. I also love my one on one talks with each student, these talks are one of my favorite things about teaching in-person. Considering all of this, I literally couldn’t imagine what teaching a creative workshop would be like online.
Then the Covid lockdowns. All of my workshops canceled for the year, many other workshop instructors I knew had been teaching online, others who hadn’t seemed to take to the virtual right away. Stubbornly, I fought it till the bitter end and didn’t do a thing to change my way of thinking. In fact, I ran the first Vermont Encaustic Retreats in June, 2021 and taught a few in-person elsewhere-but this wasn’t enough to keep me afloat financially as exhibition opportunities had also dried up. So I took a few classes, purchased some equipment (lots of useless equipment) and started recording a class for Painting With Fire. That first video literally took a month to record and another month to edit. I laugh when I can now do the recording and editing in a few days time! It was a only a short time later, that I would be teaching live workshops online. The learning was exponential, you really just have to begin and be willing to embrace mistakes along the way.
So now into my 25th anniversary of teaching, 20th year of teaching workshops and 5th year of teaching online, I get questions all the time from those who have still not made the transition from live to virtual. The following is a written summary of a call with a lovely mentee of mine wanting to add virtual teaching to her income stream. This quick list of tips and tricks will help you to take to the leap and hopefully save you some of the many dollars I spent on equipment (oh, my!) Also, there are many comprehensive classes and posts regarding online teaching out there on the Internets and I encourage you to look them up to augment my list with those ideas.
Notes for Recorded or Live Virtual Teaching…
You’re a super good speaker, articulate and easy to listen to, organized, succinct and just a nice person-how do you translate your amazing personality when students are only virtually meeting you? A very astute and accomplished workshop instructor I met while I was heading the Fiber Department at Peters Valley advised me well….Remember that teaching is mostly theater and the students see you as a character. Never was this more true than when I was teaching undergrads at Tyler School of Art. The students were young, eager to learn, but unfortunately, easily distracted to say the least. I always had to be on my toes and ready to entertain. Create your theater, put on your best performance, but remember to be authentic as well. If you’re faking it, the participants will sniff it out immediately, even if you’re safely online with hundreds of miles between you. Authentically YOU is the best character, just let it flow. Talk TO the students and not AT them. Make it a conversation, tell an anecdotal story or even a joke. It doesn’t always have to be so serious, let your personality shine.
With all that said about theater, avoid writing a full script to have in front of you at the time of recording or live teaching. If you want to remember certain things, like the specifics of history or safety, write those things out but not all the words. A detailed outline for your demos is all you need or else you might appear too scripted and unnatural.
Learn “The Weave” when teaching. This is a skill that you can work on over time as it does take time to learn. What it means is that you weave ‘talk only’ information into the demo at the lesser exciting times during the demo. Too much talking at the beginning of your class while your reading off a litany of talking points with nothing to look at but you and your tabletop is not super interesting. You might be the most entertaining teacher in the universe, however, most people have the attention spans of sand fleas. Give them something to look at when you’re speaking, even if it’s a few slides. For example, while you’re demonstrating something repetitive, you could be talking about safety or a little bit about the history of your medium, perhaps this is a time to inject an amusing anecdote. Remember, this is teaching theater.
Scheduling is a much more important consideration for live teaching, but it’s a significant consideration for both live and recorded teaching. Just like your script, have a schedule outline for how you’d like things to progress, but don’t be too rigid. The timing of your workshop will vary by content, medium and teaching style. Always be willing to embrace mistakes and/or things taking longer than you anticipated. You don’t want to go over time by more than 15 minutes, but In the horrifying case that things may take less time than you anticipate-always pad your schedule with a little extra information just in case you need it. If students are paying for a live 3 hour class and you’re only giving them 2 hours of your time, they may not be happy. One way that I 'pad’ the schedule is with inspiration examples, including artist slides and videos. This can run as short or long as I need it and participants always enjoy it. If you have more inspiration than you can share during the time frame, you can always email an artist list with links for participants to enjoy on their own.
Another way to break up the schedule is choosing to have a hybrid class of live and recorded information. By pre-recording your demos and playing them during the class, rather than demonstrating live, there is more of an opportunity to focus on the teaching. Frankly, I find doing this hybridized teaching much easier because I can stay at my computer rather than jumping up and down between my computer and demo area. Plus, you can edit the video to make it more pleasing to look at and/or remove any awkward moments. While the I’m playing the recording to the class, I'm there live to answer questions and I can stop the video to interject commentary or elaborate. Just to clarify, I pre-record demos only during the workshop, the rest of the class is live.
For the Camera Shy…
One of the reasons I was reluctant to teach online is that I’m extremely camera shy, I really hate hearing and seeing my recorded person! One of the things I did to relieve myself of this affliction was to keep a camera on at all times in the studio. At first I was ridiculously aware of it and completely distracted. So much that when I turned it on I was sort of paralyzed with a silly smile on my face. I soon got used to it and now can turn the camera on and be in front of it as comfortably as if I were in front of a class. A bonus to keeping a camera on during studio time is that it gives you lots of video content for your social media!
More uncomfortable than seeing myself on camera is hearing my voice cutting into the silence. This was one of the most difficult things I had to get over when I first started teaching in grad school. A great method is to begin speaking to yourself as you create your work in the studio with or without recording. This will help you to get used to hearing the sound of your own voice and will also help you speak through your steps. To hear yourself as your workshop participants hear you is a great way to sharpen your teaching skills.
Visuals to Consider
Having a nice clean work surface for your participants to look at is a little detail that goes a long way. I didn’t realize this until I watched a few of my earlier recordings and thought…eww, gross! While you may be a busy, working artist with paint every which way (including in your hair) this messiness doesn’t translate well on a teaching video. I have used a nice piece of wood, white paper and now I have a piece of frosted glass I put my painting panel on. The glass is easy to scrape free of waxy paint and ready to go again for another video. Your work surface doesn’t have to be perfect, but it should be nice to look at.
Clean your tools. Just like cleaning your work surface, this is not nit-picky, it’s just nicer to look at. I can’t tell you the amount of times I’ve re-recorded or re-shot photos because there was waxy gunk on my tools that even I didn’t want to look at. Your tools certainly don’t have to look brand new or perfect. You do want to look as though you use your tools once in a while, but dirty, built up gunk is just gross.
Make sure your camera is relatively close to your work surface. If it’s too far away, participants will ask you to move it closer during your demonstration if you’re doing this live, don’t move the camera because you’ll constantly have to readjust it. Instead, move the panel up to the camera so they can briefly see a closeup. Make sure you periodically move the panel closer to the camera when recording a video as well. Have tape markers on your work surface to help you return your panel straight and in the right place. In addition to tape markers, add tape to the back of the panel so it doesn’t move around while you work.
Don’t forget to spotlight your work surface on Zoom so it will record your work surface! This is very important if you’re teaching with multiple camera angles. When I’m teaching live, I always have my computer recording from the side and my phone mounted above. You can see both angles in the ‘audience’, but only one is being recorded. When you begin to demo, hit the three dots in the upper right of the image and a drop down menu with come up, click ‘Spotlight’ in the this menu. There were many live videos that I forgot to spotlight and were only recorded from the side! This is another reason why I prefer pre-recording, just in case something like this goes awry.
Teaching Ethics
I’ve long wanted to broach this subject on this blog and will do so more in depth in the near future, but for the purposes of this article I’ll just touch on it. When you’re teaching and use a technique or any information you heard from another instructor, it is polite and ethical to cite them verbally. Now, while most knowledge comes from somewhere, I'‘m not asking you to cite everything you teach. It’s the unusual technique, the one you know came specifically from that teacher that I’m describing here. I have taught an abstraction exercise in my workshops for many years and consistently cite the instructor I learned it from…and I will continue to do this because it’s the right thing to do.
It’s also really nice to mention other teachers you admire who may do something special or teach a certain technique really well. This is important when you’re teaching a technique that many instructors teach, like collage or figure drawing. For example, many instructors talk about color in their workshops-if there is a certain instructor you know who does a great job teaching color, mention them during your color demo. Even better is sending along a link to their website in your follow-up email. The workshop teaching world is competitive, but friendly. Besides, it’s always nice to pay it forward.
Equipment (Just the basics)
As I mentioned above, I spent way too much money on video equipment. Especially during Covid and for a few years after, it seems that everyone had a new fangled video thingy I needed to try. So while there is a ton of stuff out there, this short list describes the items I cannot do without.
While working in the studio and especially when recording yourself teaching, it seems you can never have enough lighting. I started with a set like this from Amazon and still use it. I also have a Ring Light, which sets off a nice glow and is especially helpful when I’m speaking directly into the camera-makes me look like a movie star. When I’m recording or teaching live, I set these lights in a circle around me, plus I have every light on in my studio and the light on my phone mount. Needless to say, it gets super hot under all of those lights-another reason why I prefer to pre-record my demos so I can take breaks.
Even with all of those sources of light, I still think I need more, so I use Adobe Premiere Rush to edit the video. I edit to make the video look brighter, take out long pauses/ anything awkward and to just create a more professional looking video. I did try iMovie and did not find it intuitive at all, but some people like it, it’s all a preference. To edit video on my phone, I recommend InShot. I should mention, I only edit videos on my phone for Instagram, not online classes…but this app is so easy to use and does so many helpful things, I wanted to let you know about it.
During Covid, every phone mount out there was only vertical, nothing that held the camera horizontal and suitable for art demonstration. My solution was to purchase an expensive tripod and a boom arm to hold my camera. It took up a very large portion of my studio and the boom was so long it kept sagging and didn’t hold my phone properly. Since then, I think I’ve purchased every phone mount out there and the best and only one I recommend is Canvas. This is the best invention for us artists, the only problem is that it took so long to get to market. I have two in my studio now, a clip on and a weighted tabletop with the magnet on both. Even though its an extra charge, I highly recommend the magnet, it makes setting up the camera exponentially easier. The Canvas mount also has a light that adds even more glow to your work surface.
For encaustic teachers only, the Liddle Griddle is the best! It’s small enough to fit on my work table so the participants can see both the griddle and my work surface without having to set up another camera over my larger griddle.
Income Streams
I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how virtual teaching has opened up a whole new income stream for me. You’re probably thinking…well, of course, but I seriously didn’t consider it. I started teaching online just to survive because the Covid lockdowns were preventing me from earning a living. I figured when all of the nonsense was over, things would just return to normal, in-person workshop wise. And they eventually did, however, I now split my time between virtual and in-person teaching. It’s difficult to say which is better, both types of teaching have pros and cons, but I still enjoy doing both and will continue to grow and learn new things from each.
Once you teach a live online class, you now have a recording you can do a few things with to generate income. One thing is to offer it for sale as a self-guided class. Another thing is to cut it up into a few videos to serve as ‘teasers’ on your social media. These smaller videos can also become a class in and of themselves or put them together with another group of recordings as a comprehensive class. The possibilities are endless.
During a live class or during the introduction to a recorded class, briefly introduce what other classes and learning opportunities you offer. I know this may seem salesy, but its rare to have a captive audience. You may as well take advantage of it while you have it, but not too much of an advantage. Make this introduction very brief and only talk about classes that may be similar to the one you’re teaching-target your audience. If it’s a one day class, lecture or demonstration, I always do this at the beginning before we get started, as most people will tune out as soon as the sales pitch begins. They are less likely to tune out during the introduction and may really be interested in what else you offer.
It’s also really important to send a follow up email after the class ends. I always thank the participants for being a part of the class and I usually send a ‘gift’ in the form of resource lists, artist inspiration lists or recommended book lists. This follow up email is also a great place to add links to your other class offerings, links to your shop or products, etc. You could also add an invitation to sign up for you Newsletter Mailing List so you can keep in touch.