5 Tips on How to Survive Online Learning
Because we all need it…
During the pandemic, many countries across the world have adapted their education systems to have their students protected from the pandemic that still rages the world. However, many countries have resorted to online learning in order to still deliver lessons to various students.
I started learning online when I was in the 7th grade, last 2016. Although I still go to the brick-and-mortar school for two or three days, most of my “learning” is happening online. This is because almost all of the materials that the teachers gave us are online, with the assessments reserved for the days that I am in school.
Even though it was difficult adjusting when I started (and maybe until now), I am grateful for the experience that I had as it taught me skills such as self-reliance and independence in learning.
With that long introduction out of the way, here are five tips to survive online learning.
1. Track your tasks.
In the years that I stayed in my junior high school, for some reason, the platform that we are using didn’t have a task manager, that is, a place where you can see all the tasks in one place. I remember a couple of times I crammed an assignment due the next day just because I forgot to write it on my pseudo-planner, which is just me chatting with myself (or other classmates) with the tasks due.
Please do not repeat my mistakes by getting a dedicated planner or notebook where you will list any tasks that are due. If you want an online option, however, I would recommend Todoist. You can add tasks and sub-tasks under those options in Todoist. Other apps I would try and recommend to track your tasks are Google Keep (with the checkbox feature) and Notion (if you have a .edu email address). Even though the e-learning platform that I now use as a task manager feature, I still use Todoist to keep track of academic and personal things.
2. Don’t be afraid to ask for help.
This seems to be in every student advice article ever, but it is even more important now we are in this online setting. Even though online learning seems like you can’t ask for help because the student-teacher interactions aren’t there, teachers will most likely be happy to ask questions about things. You can usually e-mail them or ask them through the chat messaging app your school uses about your problems in the class.
However, if a teacher is unresponsive, you can go through other sources of information, such as your classmates or Internet resources. However, if your matters are not urgent, I recommend that you still communicate with your teachers with your concerns, as they can clearly see that you are putting the effort into your grades.
3. Find your study style.
Especially when you are basically learning on your own, you should try to find your study style. Experiment with various things. Do you learn through watching videos or taking notes? Do you learn more by doing or reading? You must try to find out the answers to this as it will help in the long run.
For me, in the memorization-heavy subjects (such as history, biology, earth science, etc.), I would usually take notes (whether digital or virtual), and then create flashcards on them. I took my notes previously on a Word document, but now I compile them through Notion. If it has a lot of dates or names, I would then bring out Quizlet and drill those dates or names until I have them entirely memorized.
In the not-so-memorization-heavy subjects (such as English, mathematics, chemistry, physics, etc.), I would go through the textbook or module is given once. After that, I would go through questions that I found online on the topic, and every time I got a question wrong, I would go back and relearn that topic.
4. Use online resources.
Going back to #2, use these resources as supplementary material when you don’t understand the teacher or textbook’s explanation of a certain topic. I will link some resources that I used the most throughout my junior high school experience below. (Also most of the resources I linked below are STEM-related, as, for the humanities, I would usually just base my information on the book for the exams).
- Quizlet, a flashcard app
- CK12, a textbook website mainly for science and math
- Desmos, a graphing calculator
- The Physics Classroom, an intuitive approach to physics
- Google Scholar, a site where you can find articles for research
- Crash Course, a YouTube channel where various subjects are explained through a conversational manner.
However, I would recommend NOT looking through sites like Brainly, as what happens is you would just copy the answer without internally digesting the material. If you really must, I would recommend that you understand the explanation found there and would answer it in my own words. Through this, you avoided plagiarism and learned how to answer the question next time you see it.
5. Don’t pressure yourself.
At the end of the day, if you are still trying to be a better student, that’s a thing that you can be proud of. If you are struggling right now learning online, I feel you. It is hard to adjust fully to online learning, on top of the stress that is happening right now due to the pandemic.
Even though it seems a lot is due today or tomorrow, try to relax or chill and breathe for a while. Whether it be journaling, watching your favorite K-POP group, or doing nothing, you would be thanking yourself for doing so.
At the end of the day, learning is supposed to be a fun experience. Of course, grades are “important” up to a certain point, but it is certainly not all that makes up a person.
I think to take some pressure off of some new learners that come from students that come from non-online backgrounds but are thrown into a new method of learning without warning, I would like to say that it took me a long time to adjust to this setup, and I am still adjusting, as new teachers or classes take place. Because of this, remind yourself that you are doing okay whatever your grades or the number of checkboxes ticked in your to-do list.
