Tips for Online Classes
Hello, my pretties! I hope you’re all doing well. The teaser trailer and official trailer for A Little More have finally dropped, and I’m so excited for ya’ll to see this project.
I am in the third week of my first official grad class. It’s been going well so far - I have a ten-page (minimum) paper due at the end of next week. I really need to get cracking on that. And on that note of school work, let’s get into today’s post about my tips for online students.
Being an online student means I do all my classes on my laptop. This means that I need to have excellent time management skills to complete all my assignments on time. I am not an expert in online classes or time management, but here are some things I've learned.
Get A Planner
With a planner, you can literally write out your day. I like the planners with the daily time sheets so I can write out what to do at different times of the day. It helps me see visually how I'm going to be spending my day. I also suggest color-coding everything. For example, everything for my classes will be done in the color blue, and everything will be green for work. Finally, everything "life" related will be in pink. The current planner I have is the Erin Condren Academic Planner.
Connect with professors early
The first thing I like to do with any in-person course is connect with the professor. Usually, that means staying after class for a few minutes to introduce myself to them and say, "I'm looking forward to this class," even if that may not be 100% true. For online classes, this means just shooting them a brief email if it's a professor I haven't had before. It's a friendly and personal way to connect with someone you may or may not meet in person.
Find a study space
Find yourself a good study space that is different from your bed. You heard me, no studying in bed. Studies show that you'll get lower grades when you study in bed. Treat online courses like you would any other in-person class. Find a study space at a desk, whether at a cafe or in your own house. I like to do both - some days, I'll go to a local cafe and study, and other days, I stay home. It all depends on my mood and what else I have going on that day. The only exception I have for the "no studying in bed rule" is if I'm sick, injured, in a flare, physically can't get out of bed, and I have something due that can't be extended (and for me, all 3 things have to apply).
Limit distractions
We can easily get distracted on our laptops in this social media age. As I said above about treating online classes like any other class, the no-phones rule also applies. If you wouldn't randomly start watching Netflix or YouTube in a live class, don't do it during your online class study sessions. This includes your cell phone. I like to have my phone charging at my bed while I am at my desk doing work, or I keep it on do not disturb mode in my backpack if I'm out on campus.
Set a time frame
Setting a time frame for how much work you will do each day is a perfect way to help you get all your work done efficiently. Paying attention to due dates and times will help with this. It's shown that your brain can only focus on one subject for two hours max. So after 2 hours, go do something for an hour, such as cleaning, eating, or working out. A 20 min ONLY power nap can also help. Those things will help with mental clarity for all the other classes you must study.
Write notes by hand
Psychology research says that when you write things by hand, you're more likely to remember them because of muscle memory. I do this all the time as an actress. I will sit down and write out monologues or scenes I'm finding difficult by hand. I will highlight them and really tear apart the text. The same goes for notes. If you're working from a PowerPoint presentation, write notes by hand. If your textbook is online, see if you can print out the text so you can highlight and annotate them. Alternatively, if you can get your textbooks on a tablet, you can use a software system called Read&Write, which will read your text aloud. You can highlight notes, and it will put all of that onto a word document. Read&Write is expensive, so check with your college to see if they have a discount like my Uni did.
I hope you all enjoyed my study tips. If you have any tips for me - leave them in the comments section! Make sure you like, comment, and share this post. Follow me on social media (listed below) and join my mailing list to be updated about all future posts. As always, sending you all the light and love in this world.
