In this video, I'll share my tips for successful distance/online learning during the Coronavirus outbreak.

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**** A full transcript can be found at www.marblejar.net. ****

Hi, everyone. This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll share my tips for successful distance learning during the Coronavirus outbreak.

These are unprecedented times. People are sheltering in place, everyone who can is working from home, and college students who normally learn on campus are home on lockdown trying to figure out how to best learn online. I've been in grad school in a distance learning program for the past couple of years, so I thought I'd share some of my tips on how to make it go as smoothly as possible. First, let's talk about the differences between

Online vs. Classroom Learning
In my experience, with online learning you basically teach yourself by doing the assigned readings or watching the assigned videos and then you use that newly gained knowledge to answer discussion questions either directly to your professor or in an interactive forum like a text-only Blackboard discussion board, a FlipGrid video posting, or a VoiceThread which can be text, video, or voice only. These are just the tools my school uses -- they may differ from yours, but the concepts are the same -- after all there are only so many ways that you can respond. There is usually a requirement to respond back to your classmates to generate some interaction with your peers on the concepts you just learned. This is referred to as asynchronous learning -- meaning you work at your own pace and don't have to be online at the same time everyone else is. You will have deadlines, but within those guidelines everyone posts at times that are convenient for them. Your professors may want you to engage in synchronous learning, where they would set up something like a Zoom video meeting and have everyone join, but I'm guessing it will be tough to require that everyone to be available at the same time. It will probably take some time to work out the kinks in the process as all of these professors get used to the constraints of distance teaching. So, what does this mean for you? First of all, you'll need to

Get organized
The thing about distance learning is that you have way fewer touch points with your professors and other students to give you reminders of what you should be doing at any given time. As a result, you will have to be more self-driven and more aware of what is due and when. So, you need to get organized. Gather all your syllabuses -- or syllabi -- whatever -- and go over them. Remember that your professors are likely changing everything, so make sure you are looking at the latest plan for your classes. What do you have coming up, what readings do you have, when are things due. If you are doing asynchronous learning with weekly posts and responses, you'll need to figure out the deadlines for each of your classes. This can be really confusing since you may have multiple deadlines per week per class: a deadline for your original post (and you'll need to have done all of your reading and preparation by then) plus a deadline to respond back to your classmates and interact with others online. It may take a couple of weeks to get used to the rhythm of each class by which time you may have missed some deadlines, so print out a weekly calendar ( Here's a blank one: [ Ссылка ]) and write in when things are due for each class on a weekly basis. Post that weekly schedule somewhere obvious until you get to the point where you don't need to refer to it anymore.

You also need to make sure you know when your other assignments are due. Online classes usually have both weekly work and bigger assignments like exams, projects, or papers. Go through the syllabus or plan for each of your classes and write down the due dates for your bigger assignments on a calendar that you refer to regularly. You won't have frequent in-person classes to serve as a reminder for these looming assignments, so make sure you know those deadlines so they don't sneak up on you. All of this initial organizing is kind of big picture structural planning. I would also suggest that you establish a

Weekly Planning Day
That means on the same day every week, before you do anything else, you spend about an hour determining your plan for the week. I do this on Mondays, but if you do a lot of your work on the weekends, maybe Friday or Saturday is the best planning day for you. So, what do you do on planning day?

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