Nine Tips for Taking Online Courses

With the launch of RIVA’s first asynchronous course, RIVA 195V: Principles of Qualitative Market Research, we reflected on how to make the most of an online course. Presenting information online has some unique challenges and varied experiences for people who often have different learning styles. Using her experience from completing her Master’s Degree online, our Associate Project Coordinator, Brittany Mohammed, compiled the following nine tips to help get the most out of an online course.

1. Always do the readings. I know that sounds pretty obvious, but it’s really important. If you want to get as much as possible out of a course, you have to put in the time it takes to read all of the readings in a lesson. Even if you don’t end up using the article/reading in the class right away, down the road there’s little tidbits that will come up and be useful in the future.
   
2. Make note-taking fun – use doodles, different colors, highlighters, etc. to make your notes more fun to look at. Have you ever turned the page of a book and seen a solid block of text and your immediate thought was ‘I don’t want to read that…’? That’s what it feels like looking at blocky notes. If you’re highly visual, using color and doodles will help you associate those doodles with whatever lecture, video, or reading you took notes on – helping you remember easier. Even if you’re not a highly visual, I still recommend trying to find ways to “dress up” your notes so when you return to them, they don’t look unappealing.
   
3. Keep your course notes in a bound notebook rather than loose-leaf paper. Trust me. The last thing you want to do is be doing an assessment or a big final project or working on a thesis paper and be struggling to find that one note you know you wrote down, but have no idea where it’s located. If everything is in one place, all you have to do is flip back to the pages rather than try and find the one piece of paper that might have been taken by the goblins living under your desk.
   
4. Set aside a specific time & time limit for how long you’re going to work. Like most things, if you form better habits earlier, it helps you stick to them. If you can, plan to work on your course during a time slot where you know you can be the most effective and engaged. For me, that ended up being 7pm-9pm as I’m a night owl, so I specifically dedicated that time to focusing only on doing course work. It also meant that I didn’t have to think about where to squeeze it in with the rest of my life.
   
5. Along with the previous note, don’t try and do all of a course or a week’s lessons in one sitting. If you’re a planner like me, invest in a planner, bullet journal, or erasable wall calendar. You can use these to break up your lessons into manageable chunks; keep up to date on when certain items are due; and know when you have to complete the course by [if it’s self-paced but on a time limit].
   
6. If you’re struggling to focus, give yourself an incentive for working for a certain amount of time and commit to it [candy, break to watch an episode of your favorite TV show, etc.]. There are also apps that you can get that allow you to set a timer and a plant grows for the duration of time you’re not touching your phone. As childish as it seems, as humans we love to be rewarded for putting in the work. It helps keep you motivated, even when you’re struggling on an off day.
   
7. Take advantage of any additional resources provided – additional readings you can download, videos you can watch, or other contacts that you can use. And save them!
   
8. This one’s more of a mindset – make sure you go into it knowing what you put in is what you get out. If you don’t put that much effort into it, what you walk away with will be disappointing and you will likely feel like you wasted your time, money, and energy.
   
9. Invest in blue-light blocking glasses. Your eyes will truly thank you later, especially if you’re always looking at a computer screen.

Brittany Mohammed, MFA, is the Associate Project Coordinator at RIVA Market Research and Training Institute. She is responsible for the preparation of administrative materials for courses and projects. Additionally, she manages the day to day logistics for each class, both in person and virtual.