How to Use Webinars to Teach Developing Applications

Programming has become one of the most desired professional skills. It’s evident that software engineers specializing in the most popular technologies and knowing the most popular programming languages can be sure they will find a job — a well-paid one.

This means programming teachers don’t have to fear they will be jobless, either. With plenty of software development courses and coding schools emerging, you can share your skills with all those geeks, hungry for knowledge, eager to become developers.

Bartłomiej Bałdyga, ClickMeeting’s IT Director, confirms that companies are still expanding their dev teams to be able to raise their project management processes to the highest level:

As an IT director, I am fully aware that the dev job market is on fire. This leads to highest efforts from the companies aiming to score the most promising programming upcoming talents to build their development teams. The demand is so strong, that more and more companies, including ClickMeeting, are on the lookout for fresh developers, that they can train later on.

Also, the hype for mobile applications is not going to end any time soon. This all means a golden age for online teachers who concentrate on teaching application development.

How to get your hands on it? Well, have you ever tried using webinars to teach programming? Do you know how great webinars are when it comes to showing people how to develop software applications?

Although it might be enticing for a newbie to learn on his own, without a virtual classroom supervised by an experienced developer, this can make a programming student vulnerable to learn bad habits. Luckily, there’s a solution to teach and learn to code in the most efficient and agile way – and this means webinars. They give the opportunity to inject good programming practices at the very beginning of the learning path – assures Bartłomiej Bałdyga, IT Director at ClickMeeting.

In this article, you will learn why you should consider webinar software in your work, what to use them for and what webinar tools will support you in this new challenge.

Ready?

Table of Contents

Why would I use webinars to teach developing applications?

There are several features making webinars a perfect app development teaching tool, especially in a situation when you lecture or run workshops online. Let’s have a look at just a few of them.

Webinars take place in real time on the Internet. So, it doesn’t matter if your students are scattered around the country, the continent or the world – you can gather them all at the same time, in one virtual webinar room, and teach a class.

During a live webinar, you can interact with participants, and they can interact with you. You can see and hear each other, and most importantly, you can have a conversation. Attendees can ask you for an explanation of the most challenging parts, and you can immediately clear their doubts and help them better understand the topic.

As a programming expert running webinars, you make yourself available for students who wouldn’t be able to meet you otherwise. Let’s say they cannot travel to take part in a course you host at a university. Alternatively, you can’t be bothered to spend hours on a plane to be present at an industry event and run a workshop there. With webinars, you can meet halfway.

Here’s a hint you don’t want to miss:

Click’s Tip:
How to make your webinars interactive? How to enable your online students to broadcast audio-video so you can hear and see them during your class?

This is how we do it in ClickMeeting:
You can set it up during the webinar. First, I go to my attendees’ list on the right-hand side. Second, I choose a person I would like to enable to broadcast audio or audio and video. So, I click on the person on the list, and then – I click the “Turn mic on” or “Turn camera on” button. That’s it – now the host and the rest of the students can hear and see that person during the webinar – explains Rajmund Dziemaszkiewicz, Product Owner at ClickMeeting.

If you run an online course webinar for less than 25 students, you can switch to a Discussion Mode, and then each student will be able to be an active part of the discussion – explains Rajmund Dziemaszkiewicz.

How can I use webinars to teach programming?

A great way to show how to solve a coding problem is running a live coding session. Invite your students to a live coding webinar so they can watch how you write code step by step. They can comment in real time as you write and you can stop any time and encourage them to suggest further steps.

You can go one step further and plan a series of such webinars. In each part of the series, focus on a different problem that needs to be solved. Show your students how to deal with the most common challenges they will have to face when they start their programming career.

If you don’t want to limit yourself to teaching only one technology or programming language, set up a series of live coding webinars co-hosted by experts in various areas of software development. Invite them to run live online workshops with you and share their expertise in JavaScript, Python, Java, PHP, Ruby, C# and so forth.

Apart from live coding, you can also use webinars to teach other programming-related topics. What topics to cover? Teach your attendees about the best practices of clean code writing. Discuss the most common mistakes beginners at software development do and tell your audience how to avoid them. Advise them on how and where to look for their first programming job.

This is how to do it in practice:

What tools will help me run an excellent webinar about coding?

Webinar platforms offer a whole host of tools that will support you in your webinar challenge.

Before you plan live coding online events, make sure your webinar platform enables you to share your screen in real time. A screen-sharing tool is indispensable if you want your audience to see what you are doing on your computer.

There is no doubt that your participants are going to have plenty of questions. You can answer most of them via chat or during a Q&A session after the webinar is over. However, if you need to write or sketch anything while you speak to help them understand a topic, a whiteboard tool will come in handy.

If you find our suggestion to invite a co-presenter interesting, check whether there is a multi-user feature available in your monthly plan. It will let you run your webinar with another expert even if you are located in two different parts of the world.

Now, here’s a real deal:

For those who couldn’t make it to your live event, prepare a series of programming webinars they can watch whenever it’s most convenient for them. Use an on-demand webinars feature, like the one ClickMeeting offers, record your webinars and make them available from your website, Facebook page or YouTube channel.

Conclusion

If you are a programming teacher and you haven’t yet tried to share your knowledge via a webinar platform, do give it a go. It’s interactive, engaging and fun and it’s an excellent way to build your own programming class. Future developers will be delighted to have an opportunity to take part in a live coding session or learn the best software development practices during a live online event.