Hints to Being Successful in Our Online Courses
- Be sure you have easy and reliable high speed Internet access. You can complete courses with a dial—up connection but it will be very time consuming.
- Be willing to commit 16 hours per week to each course in which you enroll. We tell our face-to-face students in a 15 week course that they should spend a minimum of 9 hours a week in class and preparing for course. That is a total of 135 hours. If you divide that up for 8 weeks, you should be prepared to spend about 16 hours a week on each course.
- Plan to be online 5-7 times each week.
- Schedule time to work on your course(s) in your day planner or PDA. Be sure this is a time in which you can work without interruptions. Also, be sure to record due dates and other important course deadlines.
- Take time to get to know your classmates. Isolation can be a barrier to successful online learning as it can be in a face-to-face environment.
- Use a word processor when typing your postings. This will enable to you save your work in case of any unexpected technical glitches. It will also enable to you to use a sophisticated spelling and grammar checkers.
- Strive to make assignments meaningful and relevant to your context.
- For Masters students, remember that you will be asked to synthesize knowledge from all of your courses during the final practicum experience. Keep track of important resources, notes and assignments to make this process easier for you.
- Take an online course and/or complete a certificate before you officially apply to the Masters program. This will help you determine whether the program is for you.
- Keep in contact with each of your instructors and contact your advisor immediately when you have questions or comments. As in face-to-face degrees, lack of communications breeds frustration!
