New Year's Resolutions to Make for Your Online Classes

By Francine Fluetsch on December 27, 2016

As we relish in the relaxation of our winter break, the last thing we really want to think about is our classes for next semester. I know, I know, thinking about school should be banned during our time off, but our future classes can be a great influence on our New Year’s resolutions.

Is 2017 going to be the year for a more studious you? If you are planning on taking your first online class, or are continuing with online courses and want to include some New Year’s resolutions for them, here are some ideas to get you started.

Write it down.

Online classes are great because we don’t have to go anywhere for them and can literally go through lectures in our pjs, but this whole “at home” factor can lead us to sometimes put the online classes on the back burner and forget about them. Don’t worry, we’ve all been there, but to avoid this for 2017, why not invest in a calendar or download an app so you can log in all of your assignments for your online class?

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I find that writing things down in multiple places will help you keep your schedule straight and will also combat stress, since you won’t have that bad feeling in the pit of your stomach that you’ve forgotten something. I use a calendar app on my phone as well as a paper calendar to log all upcoming assignments, quizzes, and lecture notes that I should pay attention to so that I make sure to stay on top of everything.

Online classes can really sneak up on you if you save all the work for the last week of the semester, so write it down and get it done!

Put in more time.

As mentioned above, there is something about the lack of physicality with online classes that makes it easy for us to put them on the back burner and focus on our classes that we actually have to attend lectures for, but online classes are still going to assign you a grade at the end of the day, so you don’t want to get a bad grade due to laziness.

Even if the class is only two credits, you still want to make sure that you are putting some time aside to study for your online class and actually go through the lecture slides/modules. I know that it can be a drag to sit through them in their entirety, especially when it gives you the option to just sort of breeze through them, but that will hurt you in the long run because you won’t really learn or retain anything.

You should decide how much time you want to dedicate to each of your classes, including your online ones, and then stick to that schedule.

Sometimes, we get so overwhelmed with all of the work we have from each of our classes that we don’t know where to begin, so if you have it all mapped out for yourself, you’ll have an easier time getting everything done and spending a good amount of time working on each class.

Get a study group.

A great aspect of online classes is that you don’t have to interact with other people, but sometimes others can actually come in handy. If you find that, even after mapping everything out, you still can’t seem to put time aside for your online class, why not form a study group with some of the other members in your class?

Your teacher is bound to make all of you post on forums anyway, so you can use that means of communication to find yourself a group who also wants to put in some more hours for class work or studying (or maybe even both). This will be great for you, since you will be forced to make time for your online class and will also have the opportunity to meet some cool people.

Treat it like a real lecture.

If going the group route is not your style, you can still find ways to motivate yourself to get things done for your online class. Something that might be beneficial would be to treat the online class as if it were a lecture, meaning that on certain days of the week (your choice), you go to a café or library and focus only on your online class, as if it were mandatory. Try really hard not to make excuses for missing your “lecture time.”

To make sure that you go, why not invite a friend along? They don’t have to be in your class for this to work, simply make sure that they too have something to work on, and then you can treat it like a study hall/mixed lecture of some sort. Let’s be real, doing our work in bed leads to us falling asleep, and while it’s nice to stay in pjs, it’s more productive to get dressed and go to a quiet location to get your work done.

Good luck with those resolutions and all of your classes next semester; this will be your year!

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