by Hala Monsour

Created on: May 20, 2007   Last Updated: May 17, 2011

Managing your Online Learning Schedule

Getting Ready

One of the biggest hurdles we face in online learning is time-management. For some, the skill comes naturally, for others, not so naturally. But this is OK. Why? Because we are all different and our learning styles are different. If you are an online student, or an aspiring online student, the most important piece of advice, is to relax and be prepared to have fun! Yes, I said Fun!

Sure you know some courses are going to be tough; sure statistics may not be your 'thing' and sure, there may be days, where you just aren't feeling it. That is OK too. Why? Because you are going to read the upcoming steps on how to best get prepared to manage your online schedule.

Now we are assuming you work a lot, have a hectic personal and social life, and the world does not give you a break, and here you are, sitting and, reading up on how you can solve all these problems with a schedule in place. I will not tell you by the hour what you must do, but I will share some tips that I have used in the past and still use because they are the most effective to tackle the assignments and readings.

Getting Set Up!

1. At the beginning of every course, use your first day to download all the course materials. If this means copy and paste from the website into the word document, then do so.

2. Create a folder for each week for the duration of the course.

3. In each folder, create subfolders for lessons, readings, assignments, and discussion questions (adjust content to be fit your online setting method of delivery).

4. Each copied and pasted document must be saved in the appropriate weekly folder in the appropriate subfolder. For example, you saved week one's theme reading. Save the document in the week one folder, in the theme-reading folder.

5. Do this for the remainder of the course. Your eyes will get tired and you may think this is useless, but it is not. Just think of the time when the internet is down or you have no connectivity for one reason or another; you can go to your desktop, click the folder, and proceed with your work without panicking.

6. After you have completed the folder set up with all the documents, check to make sure that you have copied all the reading requirements (some schools have additional reading materials) and save those offline.

7. For additional reading that requires library search; search for the documents. Most are in PDF format, so you can use the save feature from the PDF application to save in the

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