What started as a necessity has now become a usual phenomenon in the education sector. Yes, I am talking about distance education. If someone in 2010 told us that our children would be attending school from their home, we would have laughed at the absurdity of it all.
Apparently, it was very much doable and has been done now by many large-scale institutions for various reasons. However, how teachers are dealing with it is a concern that is often left unheard.
While flexibility is something appreciated by all educators, what they did not foresee were the endless time management issues that tagged along.
This article, therefore, explores why mismanagement happens and how educational staff can remain on schedule.
What Makes It Difficult for Education Staff to Stay on Schedule?
Now, to see what challenges educational staff face when it comes to staying on time, continue reading. That is because whether it is issues with engagement or scheduling, the first step in sorting them out is to become aware.
Blurred Work-Life Boundaries
In traditional schools, teachers and the rest of the staff are expected to forego all their tasks once the bell rings. Unfortunately, that does not remain the case when online education is in discussion.
Since there are no bells or calls for the staff to dissociate from their work and transition to personal life, both tend to merge.
Teachers, particularly, can find themselves responding to emails at late hours and entertaining students even when the school hours have long since been over.
Eventually, they suffer burnout due to the lack of clear boundaries and can fail to remain productive.
Frequent Distractions
Another issue is that while in school, the structure helps educators remain focused, at home, that structure is absent. Plus, like all of us, educators can also come across frequent distractions that are unheard of in traditional education, such as household chores.
What really is a small distraction can overall impact the educators’ flow and might even lead to delays in their lesson planning and lectures.
Therefore, if the staff continues to fail to put additional measures in place to remain attentive, their schedule can suffer monumentally and leave them in a questionable position.
Heavier Digital Workload
While teachers previously used to deliver a lecture in class and call it a day, that does not remain the case anymore. Online teaching requires rigorous pre-class preparations, like creating presentations and uploading content for students to portals.
To add further to the problem, teachers are also expected to continue interacting with students and their fellows through chats, discussion boards, emails, etc. Therefore, while the teachers try to juggle all these requirements, their screen time increases substantially and can cause fatigue.
Moreover, since 74% of teaching staff experience stress adapting to digital methods, it is likely to become harder for them to manage time effectively.
Lack of Structured Routine
Traditional educational institutions provide teachers with a daily routine to follow. Like clockwork, educators always know which classes to visit, when to have lunch, and what their designated office hours are.
However, that framework is removed from the remote environment, which leaves a lot of space for guessing. Rather than knowing what tasks are expected of them and when to work on them, teachers are left clueless.
With half of them procrastinating and the other half suffering from work overload, the consequences are not nice.
How to Ensure Your Education Staff Stays on Schedule?
Well, for all problems, there are solutions. Since 66% of professors opt for outdated methods to manage time remotely, they need to take proper initiatives to tackle the issues at hand.
Be it using a time tracking software for educational staff or planning properly, the tips given below will help them remain on schedule.
1. Set a Consistent Daily Routine
Maintaining a constant routine over the days is one of the simplest but most effective ways for remote educators to stay organized and on schedule.
For starters, educators must set specific working hours as per the institution’s requirement, which will help them create a clear boundary between professional and personal life. Moreover, they must also dedicate particular hours for lectures, grading, office hours, and breaks.
With a clear schedule, their day would be more structured, and they would not have to suffer from decision fatigue. However, the schedule must offer flexibility and is subject to change as per weekly commitments and responsibilities.
On the other hand, employers can help educators throughout the process with gentle reminders for reinforcement of habits. They should also ensure that the staff has enough leeway to transition from professional to personal roles while in the same physical space.
2. Use Time Management Tools Effectively
Managing time is a constant challenge in educational environments, especially when managing lesson planning, grading, meetings, and administrative duties. Without proper tracking, it is easy for valuable hours to be lost in repetitive or low-priority tasks. This is where digital solutions specifically built for educational workflows can make a real difference.
TimeBee time tracking software for educational staff can prove to be helpful for educators who find it difficult to stay on schedule. The app is an all-around solution for both remote employers and academic teams.
Therefore, while the employer gains insight into how the team is operating, the teachers, too, can self-monitor to identify any inefficiencies in their workflow.
With robust features facilitating employee monitoring, TimeBee can help employers improve productivity and streamline tasks in their institution without overburdening the staff.
Moreover, since the app is easy to use, there is no learning curve or requirement for additional training, which can take some stress off the educators.
In its entirety, the insights provided by TimeBee are detailed plus accurate, with proper customization and filtering options.
Discussed below are some of its prominent features designed specifically for the education sector.
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Attendance Reports
Educational staff can use the TimeBee app to clock in and clock out on time. With the attendance reports, employers can better understand their staff’s start and end times, while the staff also does not remain under any obligation to continue working outside of work hours.
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Time Tracking
Not only that, but while the educators are working and teaching, their time is also tracked to make sure the teacher is actively engaged with the students and other tasks.
Plus, if they do get distracted because of their environment and stop working, TimeBee sends a distraction alert to them after a particular time of inactivity. They must then engage with the pop-up on their screen for the app to continue logging their time.
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Web & Apps
For deeper insight, employers can use TimeBee to rate various websites and apps as productive, unproductive, or neutral. Teachers can then check if they are spending any time unproductively to better stick to their schedule.
In addition, the screen monitoring provides periodic previews of the staff’s work desktop that can also be used by the teachers.
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Activity Summary
Using TimeBee, teachers can monitor their activity by checking their productive, unproductive, neutral, idle, and unrated time. Since the web and app usage data is translated into productivity metrics generated through advanced AI technology, both employers and educators get complete insight.
These productivity trends are then compiled into quarterly performance reports within the web dashboard to identify the least and most productive employees immediately.
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Project Progress
Lastly, when teachers are working, they can use TimeBee log their time in various projects to see how long it took to complete specific tasks accurately. By using this tool, they can stay on schedule and ensure effective time management.
3. Designate a Dedicated Workspace
When working from home, it is natural for the lines to blur and for distractions to come to play more often than not. To reduce such instances from recurring, educational staff must have a dedicated workspace in their home.
Even if they cannot have an area to themselves, simple measures like using a corner desk or a spare room will suffice. However, they must choose a space that is quiet and with sufficient lighting.
With the educator regularly using the space, the family, too, will know that it is the start of their workday and avoid causing unnecessary disruption.
Moreover, they must also have all the required materials with them in that area, like teaching material, headphones, notes, etc. Since everything needed will be accessible to them, they will be less likely to break their flow.
But the responsibility of staying on schedule does not fall only on the educator. Employers must also provide them with the training they need to ensure educational sessions without disruptions.
4. Prioritize and Plan Ahead
For proper planning, educators must outline their weekly responsibilities and break all their larger tasks into smaller, manageable blocks. By doing so, they will feel less overwhelmed and not mismanage.
They can also utilize personal planning tools like calendars and weekly planners to visualize their workload.
But planning is not all they should be doing. They must also prioritize tasks using techniques like the Eisenhower Matrix.
With this prioritization method, they can easily divide their tasks into four different categories:
- Urgent & Important (do immediately),
- Important but Not Urgent (can schedule it for later),
- Urgent but Not Important (delegate it if possible),
- Neither Urgent nor Important (eliminate it and come back to it when needed).
Another helpful technique is time blocking. Using it, educators can put similar tasks together and work on them in one slot to avoid context switching.
However, above all else, the educational staff must remember that they are humans too, and there can be reasonable delays. Therefore, they must schedule buffers between different tasks to offer themselves some leeway to handle overruns while staying on time.
More importantly, all the responsibility should not fall on the teacher’s shoulders, and employers must organize regular time management workshops for teachers to better learn about different tools and techniques.
5. Communicate Boundaries and Availability
Educators do not have to be available at all times because not only is it unrealistic, but also not good for the overall quality of their work. Instead, they must be at liberty to define their availability depending on their workload and energy levels.
They must also have designated office hours and communicate them to both their students and fellows via email or the course syllabi.
Educators should further outline their response time window, like within 24 hours, to build expectations beforehand.
Employers must also respect these boundaries and establish a good work-life balance. The best approach to do so is by modelling behavior by not sending emails outside of work hours, so others do not feel compelled to respond promptly, too.
All in all, it should not come as a shock that the online education market has grown by 900% since 2000. However, the growth can plummet and leave institutions struggling if the challenges remote learning presents are not tackled proactively.
Rather than leaving teachers to deal with their deteriorating management and mental health, educators must step up for their team.
By equipping them with reliable management tools, like time tracking software for educational staff, a positive step in the direction of proper scheduling can be taken.
If not that, then employers should at least support a good work-life balance and prevent teachers from feeling burned out and unproductive.
