Succeeding in Online Classestips for college students by Sharon GeraldThis work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visithttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons,171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.

Succeeding in Online ClassesOnline classes have suddenly become extremely popular in the past few years, mainly becausethey are so convenient. Students taking online classes can set their own schedules without worrying too much about whether work, family, and school will conflict with one another.Even so, online is not for everyone. Some people do much better with an instructor on handand in person each class period. Some people don't have the self-discipline needed to work more independently, and others just aren't ready yet to navigate the required technology.Online classes can be wonderful, fulfilling, and inspiring. Or they can be frustrating,disappointing, and discouraging. For the most part, which of these experiences you have is upto you. You are in the driver's seat. If you take charge, pay attention, and apply all of yourskills to the task, you're going to be fine. If you lean back to take a nap and wait for someoneelse to wake you up, you're going to crash.That's just the way it works.To understand whether online classes are right for you, ask yourself a few key questions.

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Why do you want to take your class online?If you've chosen online because you think it will be easier, forget it. The workload isgenerally the same in online as in face-to-face classes, and more of the burden of scheduling the time to do assignments falls on you. Online classes can actually beharder and more time consuming than day classes because you have to read everythingthat you might just be told in a face-to-face setting. For some, that's no problem. Slow or inattentive readers might find themselves reading instructions over and over beforeunderstanding them, though. Think carefully about how well you follow writteninstructions before signing up for an online class.On the other hand, if you are taking online classes because you need to do most of your work at odd times or because the commute to your campus is too long or because youhave trouble sitting still in the classroom and like to be actively working on your ownall the time, online might be for you. As long as you expect to do as much or more work, and as long as you accept that the responsibility for motivation is yours, you'llprobably adapt well to online.

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Do you really have the time to take the class?Sometimes people who are already overworked sign up for online classes thinking they will require less time. Not so. Be sure before you sign up for any class that you do haveadequate time to devote to it. A good rule of thumb is to assume you'll need twice theamount of time you would normally spend in a classroom per week per class. Day classes meet for 150 minutes or 2 ½ hours per week. Thus, you can assume that at aminimum you'll need 5 hours per week per class to work on online classes. That's at aminimum. On weeks when you have tests or projects due, you'll need to put moretime into each class. Regardless, if you want to take a full-time load or 4 classes

online in one semester, you'll need to plan into your schedule at least 20 hours per week for school work. That's the minimum. Remember that some weeks you'll needcloser to 30 or 40 hours of school time.Think of it this way. To take a full load of online classes, you need the equivalent of three hours per day Monday-Thursday, plus all day on Saturday to work on the classes with the expectation that sometimes you'll work most of the day on Sunday as well.That's the same amount of time you'd put into school if you took a full load of nightclasses or a full load of day classes, and that's a very realistic expectation for the time you would need to commit to succeed in online classes.

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Do you have access to the necessary technology?The ideal scenario for taking an online class is having both an up-to-date computer and broadband Internet at home. Not every does. You can take an online class usinglibrary or lab computers if you need to. You can even do some things on slowercomputers, and in some cases even on smart phones. If you have neither the computerand high speed Internet at home nor the time to go to a library or lab where these areavailable, however, you cannot hope to succeed in an online class.High speed Internet is important because the course content is unlikely to run very wellon dial-up. If all you have at home is dial-up, that doesn't mean you can't take onlineclasses. It just means you'll have to juggle your time. Do as much of the work as youcan at home, but still plan some time each week to go to a lab where you can complete your assignments.It's particularly important that tests are taken using a reliable high speed connection.If your connection times out during the middle of a test, you have a problem. It behooves you to plan accordingly.

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Do you have the technological skills?The good news is you don't have to be a tech whiz to take an online class. You just needaverage technological skills. It's essential you do have those skills, though. It's alsoessential that you are willing and able to learn new skills as the class progresses.Do you know how to send email? Can you send an email attachment? Can youdownload and upload files? Can you navigate websites? Can you locate informationonline? Can you customize your profile on a website by adding a picture and editingpersonal information? Can you save a word processing file to a format of your choice?Can you figure out how to find that file once it is saved?These are fairly simple and common electronic skills. If you don't know how to dothem already, you need to figure them out. If you feel too overwhelmed by the thoughtof even trying to figure them out, online classes may not be for you.Before you give up on your own tech potential, though, relax and just give some of these things a shot. For a start, ask Google and YouTube how they are done.