 Distance
Ed Courses Are Easy to Put Off
If you tend to put off things unless they are right "in your face,"
that tendency multiplies when you are taking a course via distance
education.
To help defend yourself against procrastination, try these links about
managing your study time wisely:
In short, determine the things in your life that distract you from your
studies--either from getting around to studying or while you are studying--and
devise methods to overcome or put aside those distractions.
To assist with that effort, here are some standard tools:
Managing This Online Course
Managing your time means
setting clear priorities and communicating with your loved ones, your
professors, and your supervisor(s) at work.
Midterm:
In the middle of each course, work is
likely to cluster due to tests or major assignments coming due in every
course. For instance, in this online course, the
essay that ends the first unit
and a presentation are due somewhat close together. Try to plan for this
pile-up by working on the presentation as a long-term project.
Ending the Course:
Your last essay
will be due the week the semester ends, so that you might not have time to
revise for a higher grade after I grade your essay. Note, however, that
many college courses accelerate toward the end of the course, so that you
might be asked during the last weeks to complete a research project, to
study chapters that a teacher won't get to during class, and to prepare for
a final test or an exam that covers the entire semester's work. If you are
in courses with such requirements, that may cut into your revising time.
In this online course, extra-credit work can be done at any time, but many
students wait until their final total is clear to them and rush to toss off
some last-minute task; of course, rushing risks having the work rejected as
less than A or B quality and count for nothing.
Catching Up vs. W vs. F:
If you do get behind in the work for this course, seek one of these
remedies:
- Make time for a free
tutor in the Academic Support Center to help plan, organize, revise, or
edit your essays
- Send in drafts to the
instructor.
- Find
a higher gear to catch up with missed work.
If you see no remedy, then
you may wish to consider withdrawing from the course rather than risking an
F, which would damage your "grade point average" (GPA). A W grade is not
averaged in with your other grades, but it can impact on your financial aid
status, so consider carefully and ask about the impact in the Access Center
if you are on financial aid or requesting it for the following semester.
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