How to Make The Most of Your Online Learning Course

by cambodia4kidsorg

You’re in a café, typing away at your laptop while the planet outside the glass wall silently breezes by. Casual observers might say you’re busy updating your Facebook. But on quicker inspection, you’re deep in a discussion group with your e-classmates. You’re enrolled in an online class, and you like it.

If you’re an online student, count yourself lucky. Online studying, with over 10 million e-learners worldwide, is a strong and continuing trend. Colleges and universities have long respected and acknowledged online degrees as being on equal footing with traditional on-ground degrees. And by harnessing all the potentialities the cyberworld, you as an e-learner get to buy skills you need in the technology-centric business planet of the 21st century.

Gone are the four walls of the traditional classrooms that used to box students in tight clean spaces. With online learning, there are no geographical borders anymore, the infinitely vast Planet Wide Web is your classroom. People from all walks of life and from every house on planet are your classmates, your interactions with whom making for a more ethnically-varied classroom experience. That’s something no textbook can offer.

Additionally, there are no biases against race or gender or religion. Also, as many e-learners admit, you take charge of your time, control your pace, and attend your classes at a schedule you are most adjusted to. With course materials available 24/7, at the click of the mouse, it’s everything a student can question for.

Critics have often diminished the substance of online studying, arguing that the absence of actual and private interaction with your professors and co-learners take a huge and substantial chunk out of learning. You’re all lonely studying, so that doesn’t count, they say. That’s one misconception in this area e-learning that should be banished: that online studying is a lonely business. On the divergent, e-learners get to interact with their classmates unlike ever before, with e-mail, chatting, and web conferencing. Everyone can see each other. And everyone gets a say.

The other crucial top these critics miss is that what online learning offers, at a very critical stage in many e-learner’s lives, is convenience. This convenience becomes more of a necessity rather than a virtue mainly for busy e-learners who are also employees or self-employed individuals, part-timers, stay-at-home mothers with kids, or elderly people who have to stay home. This also includes many e-learners living in remote rural areas that do not offer college or even vocational courses.

If being online is all it takes for a degree, then who’s to complain? What matters is how e-learners are able to maximize the potentialities of the Internet as they go tackling one e-lesson with a further.

So how just so do you make excellent your online learning? Read on.

1. Don’t be worried of technology. Instead, maximize it to your advantage. You don’t have to be internet-savvy to be an e-learner. But it sure helps to know the basics, and from there you can learn more. Learn how to use search engines more effectively by using the right keywords and keyphrases. Know when a website and its information is trustworthy. For one, don’t just depend on one website for research materials.

2. Speak up. And be counted. If you’ve always been shy at class, now’s the time to drop the act. The cyber classroom is a veritable house for you to express your opinions, question questions, or make an line of reasoning for your case. Unlike in the traditional classroom setting where only the most talkative and opinionated hogs the microphone and gets to have his/her say, now, everyone can participate in the discussion, whether formal or informal. Relish these moments when you can pitch in your thoughts. Don’t be worried of contradiction. Learn what you can from everyone.

3. Go ahead. Talk to the prof. It used to be that students had to leave Post-it- notes on the doors of their elusive professors, hoping for a line of communication. Well, say goodbye to that. Divergent to well loved belief, your instructors and professors, whether online or offline, are really excellent people deep inside. They’re not really dodging you. They’re really approachable. So don’t hesitate to question anything you didn’t know in the course material thru e-mail or chat. Just remember not to come across as a stalker or an avid fan, and you’re set to go.

4. Be on time. It’s right that online learning offers a flexible schedule for everyone, but this doesn’t mean you can ignore other people’s schedule. Whenever you and your online classmates have to meet in your chatrooms or newsgroups outside of your formal lessons, be there on time and don’t be a cause of delay.

5. Respect. It’s such a simple word, but often taken for granted. Being in an online classroom where you and your classmates are physically apart, it’s so simple to throw an inappropriate comment or a nasty comment here and there. If you don’t agree with your equals opinion, say so in mature, civil way. That’s the cool thing to do. If, but, you’ve already said a rude word, be man enough and say sorry. Then go on. Remember, a discussion group is only as excellent as the thoughts the members are willing to chip in.

6. Finally, be in excellent shape. E-learning at the comfort of your own home doesn’t mean you can let go of your health, just because it spares you the daily distress of having to commute to teach, go from one classroom to a further, etc. Eat right, get some exercise, and sleep well. Studying, whether you’re responsibility it online or in more traditional means, naturally consumes your energy, so be in the best shape you can be.

So go ahead. Find out what you’re really passionate in this area and enroll in an online course now. Wherever you are, whatever your age, it’s never too late to learn something new.

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Category: College It Courses Article