Online learning, virtual classes, Zoom…
Studenting in the time of Covid makes for some special difficulties. There are some simple, easy fixes and study tips to help you with online learning and navigating the new normal.
Here’s my hot list of academic life-changers; key study skills you can use to dominate your grades when it comes to online learning. Here goes…
1) Get Help With Your Online Learning
It’s the 21st Century, fellow netizens! Flying cars, robotic house maids, and personal jet packs are now commonplace….
Okay, well, maybe not.
But it’s still the 21st Century!, which means you don’t have to rely on your brilliant professor’s rapid-fire mumble-lectures and micro-type PowerPoints. Instead, you can…
- Use the interwebs and find help online.
- Get tutoring.
- Hire an academic coach.
- Talk to the TA, a grad student, or another prof.
- Hell’s Bells, people, phone a friend!
Going it alone is soooo last century. Getting help with virtual learning is an instant study skills upgrade! BONUS: Active learning–taking charge of your own education–also amps up your focus!
2) Stop Procrastinating
Procrastination is enemy number-one for my erstwhile readers and for online learning, and it’s a totally fixable problem.
Take a look here for loads of proven, rock-solid techniques for making procrastination just one more item on the long list of problems other people have.
And it ain’t just for virtual learning. Stopping procrastination is also one of those study skills that will serve you well in other areas of your life!
3) Fix Your Focus Fails
One thing skeet-shooting champs, tigers, fighter pilots, birds of prey, and neurosurgeons have in common; they can refrain from checking their electronic iCrack while trying to concentrate.
Developing the focus of a half-starved jungle cat on Aderol is within your grasp; just take a look at these posts.
Also, have you tried using the Pomodoro Technique? I use it all the time to help my focus. Works like a politician doesn’t!
4) Use Your Down Time
Time management is not just for business execs and planner fiends. Time management is for online students!
How much time do you spend singing along with Billie Eilish at stop lights, swiping through Instagram, or playing Candy Crush Saga while waiting for your next online class to start? That’s not time management, people; that’s time mis-management (except for maybe Billie Eilish).
Instead, make time management one of your main online student tools, for example if you have a business using tools as paystub can be helpful for managing employees. Treat school like an 8 to 5 job and carry your study fodder with you (Flash cards? Notes? Anki?) so that any time is study time.
Do that, and you might actually have time for a real (guilt-free) social life. More info here.
5) Teach To Learn
The single best way I know to master new materials is–bump-ba-ba-BUUUM!–to teach it to someone else.
What makes it so powerful? It fosters active learning.
What’s active learning? It’s when you get off your passive “feed me” academic keister and start taking charge of your own learning. Active learning is, well, active!
Teaching the information you are learning online to someone else forces you to engage in active learning.
Here’s how. Take the notes you make in class or while reading for a class, and use them as an outline while you teach the topic to a motivated learner (even if that learner is just in your imagination). Learn more.
Conclusion
Get help with your online learning and virtual academic sore spots. Stop procrastination cold and get moving. Fix your focus fails and up your concentration. Use your down time and translate time management into better grades. Teach you study materials to someone else to learn it better yourself.
Those are definitely the big five study skills that will make your online academic life thrive.
Take a look at my ebook, Best Grades Ever!, for more details on all of the above study skills. Bonus; it’s free with a monthly subscription to StudyProf and the weekly academic help that comes with it!
Have a useful tip or tool that really made your online learning life easier? Share the wealth in the comments.
© Cody Blair, All Rights Reserved.
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