Online Learning for the New School Year

Online Learning for the New School Year

By: James B.

Are you just beginning your first online course of the year? Are you worried about not having a teacher in front of you? Don’t be! Learning without a teacher will make you a more independent learner. Becoming an independent learner will help prepare you for college. All you have to do is stay on task and don’t fall behind.

Online classes take much more self-motivation than traditional classes. You might be worried about how much time you will have to spend working on your assignments at home, but I assure you, if you work diligently at school and avoid playing games, watching videos, etc; you will have much less work to do at home. I have seen other students that have complained about having a heavy work load and hours of homework to do, yet they always played games in class or listened to music, etc. You need to have a schedule for exactly when you are going to do each assignment.
At the beginning of each week, you should decide on how you are going to pace yourself throughout the week, which assignments to do at what times, etc. Some teachers will provide a day by day schedule. Some may only provide a weekly schedule and simply ask you to turn everything in by the end of the week. If your teacher posts weekly schedules, then it is essential that you pace yourself throughout the week. Do NOT wait until the last day or two to complete an entire week’s worth of assignments. Spending an entire night on homework is definitely NOT fun.
Why take online courses? I’m sure the common response is that the given course wasn’t available at that student’s school. While this may be true, the most important thing you gain from taking an online course is independence. When going to college, there will be many times when there will be no help from the teacher or other students. In most online courses, search engines such as Google will become your best friend. There may be questions that you can’t find in the text and you may have to do some research. Learning how to find an answer yourself and researching additional topics will be very useful in college. Online courses in general help to prepare you for the kind of environment you will encounter in college.
Congratulations for taking advantage of NCVPS, the classes they offer, and also for taking on the challenge of online learning. You will acquire many skills from online learning that you could never gain from a traditional class.

Good luck in your online learning!

Editor: Alexander M.