How To Prepare For Your Online Classes

By Allie Mitchell on August 27, 2016

Sometimes students don’t have the time to go to classes and physically sit there; some students just don’t have time for going to classes, but they still want to go to school.

So what is the next best thing? Online classes. I have personally taken online classes before and they have their pros and cons. Online classes are all about time management and good teacher/student communication. You are forced to look to your other classmates if you have questions and your teacher is not getting back to you. Online classes are also all about a good internet connection, but we will get into that later.

This article is meant to help you better prepare yourself for your upcoming online classes. Personally, I believe that online classes are slightly a bit more of a responsibility, only because you have to make sure that you go and look to see if anything is new or if anything is due, every single day.

You don’t get to meet with a class every other day to ask questions face to face, unless you would like to make a trip down to your teacher’s office hours. You have to be willing to put in the work with whatever you chose to do; regardless, online classes are just a little bit of a different story, because the computer IS your classroom.

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Here are a few tips in preparation of your online classes that you have to face head on.

•Make sure you have everything you need before you start. Make sure you download all the necessary requirements if they have any. Make sure everything works for you. You will need to be able to see pages, documents, and more. Make sure you have a good internet connection like I said above. If you have no internet connection than you can’t get into your class and you can’t take your tests and do your homework. A strong internet connection, as simple as it sounds, is essential — obviously — to doing well in an online class.

•Just like if you were preparing to study for an in-class type of class, you will need to set aside room for your schoolwork.

Decide if you need the book or not. If you are taking an online class at a different school, learn your online campus (the school website) and the actual campus, just in case you find yourself having to go there. You may need to go to see your online professor, because honestly, just speaking over email can be extremely uneventful and unhelpful. Sometimes you need to get right in their face, respectfully, and ask them your desired questions.

•Introduce yourself. Some classes have it to where you can introduce yourself and try to make connections with your classmates, since you won’t be seeing them in person. Make yourself known and try to make, for lack of a better word, alliances. Since you will only be communicating via online you might as well make it count.

•Make sure to keep up with dates and times. I remember when I took an online course, I forgot the date of the midterm; thank goodness my teacher didn’t notice and he had just left the test open for people to take and submit online. That was me just being lucky; most people don’t get that kind of luck and are stuck with an F. Don’t be that person. Remember when you have tests and quizzes and set aside a time to take them — a time with no distractions — and remember to take them in a place with good internet connection.

My sister had an incident where she had to use my computer to take an online final because her computer’s internet was acting up. Make sure to check on those things before anything major comes up.

•Organize your time. Ideally, this is with anything in life, but it is optimal when it comes to online courses. And also make sure to NOT GET DISTRACTED! Online courses can rack your brain only because you are on the internet, therefore you can get distracted by things like Facebook and Twitter or whatever else you are connected on. Once you sign in on one of your social media sites, you get sucked in and forget about whatever else you were doing.

•Don’t lose track of time! Just don’t do it, you don’t get it back, so don’t lose it in the first place. The school won’t help you with that.

One final thing would be to just work hard. Just like any other class, if you work hard it will show in your grades and in the final result of your GPA. Don’t let online classes beat you down, they were technically invented to make your life easier, not harder. Just remember that when you are huffing and puffing about them.

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