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Succeeding with Online Courses
Skills Needed for Online Courses
Tips
Communication
Rules of the Road

Code of Conduct
Using your computer
Technical Tips
 

Succeeding with Online Courses.
Taking courses online can be a little like taking courses in a foreign country. Most of us are still learning the norms and expectations of the online environment. This page explains how to make the most of your online opportunity and how to make sure it's right for you. 
 

Skills Needed for Online Courses
Online courses can work for any student, just as a physical, on-site classroom with face-to-face instruction can work for any student.  But often the quality of the "fit" with a particular instructor or a particular class environment varies. Taking an online class requires just as much time and effort as class on campus--and there are some new twists for most of us. Online courses place the responsibility for course time management squarely on you, the student. These questions assess the skills needed to do well in an online course:

• Do you like to work independently?
• Are you generally self-motivated?
• Do you have good time management skills?
• Do you need convenience and an adjustable schedule?
• Are you comfortable asking for clarification and continuing to ask when you need more information?
• Are you comfortable working at a computer?  (When using new technologies, you know how to check help screens and manuals, and ask questions.)
• Do you have good study skills?
• Do you have experience surfing the World Wide Web? If most of your experience is through a provider such as America Online, please read about AOL and using WebCT
• Would you be comfortable emailing your instructor if you had problems with anything in the course?

Did you answer "yes" to most of these questions? Then you'll do just fine with online courses--if you hesitated on some of these questions, you'll probably do just fine also, but you may need to work harder and more deliberately at staying in touch with your instructor. 

Tips
What we know from research is that there is usually an adjustment period for most students as they learn the rhythm and patterns of online communication. Here are some tips for getting comfortable: 

• Take time prior to the first class session to review all the help files available.
• Spend some time just navigating your way through the class and making sure you can figure out the uses of all the buttons.
• Manage your time. You'll find that your time management skills will be critical in an online class. Why? Because it's very easy to spend either far too little time or far too much time on the class. Set designated blocks of time to work on the class. This will help you stay up with the assignments and with the interaction required in most online classes.
• Download or print out pages for reference and review away from the computer.
• Set priorities, and pay close attention to what your instructor says about priorities.
• Ask right away for help if something isn't going right, whether it's a technical issue or something to do with the class environment. Don't waste time trying to solve a problem; just call or send an email to your instructor.

Communication
Remember that you won't have all those nonverbal cues that you get in the physical classroom and neither will your instructor. Words on the screen help the instructor "see" you much more clearly. Also, your instructor's role will be much less that of the distributor of information and much more that of a guide or resource for students in exploring an area of knowledge. The teaching style used in online courses may be different from the traditional college model. In fact, we encourage our online faculty to tailor their teaching styles to the more collaborative and interactive model of the web. 

What does this mean for you?
Again, taking a class online means you won't be sitting quietly in the classroom; participation is essential for everyone involved. 

As always, effective communication is critical to success. It's even more important in the online environment because your instructor can't see your frown or hear the question in your voice. Here, you'll be responsible for initiating more contact, for being persistent when you don't understand something. Your instructor wants to help--please write your question and send it along, express your confusion, your concern, and be direct! You will save a lot of time, and your instructor will have fewer sleepless nights. Be sure and ask about anything and everything that has to do with course content, course procedure and evaluation.  Someone else probably has the same question. 

Rules of the Road
The following suggestions will help you navigate (travel) through your online course

1. Participation plays an important role in an online class. The instructor--as well as your student peers--need to know that you are there by receiving email messages from you and by your participating in the course discussions. Your comments, questions, and answers are needed to make the class feel like a community.
2. Persistence and patience are two qualities that will get you far in an online environment. Technical issues may arise from time to time. Do not wait to deal with these difficulties. Send a message to the instructor immediately.
3. The answers to questions do not always need to come from the instructor. Use the email and discussion forums to ask questions of other students to support each other in the virtual classroom.
4. An online environment restricts the ability to see your smile when you are intending to be funny or the annoyance when upset. Please use emoticons to help everyone know what you are thinking. Some examples of emoticons:

   :-) Your basic smiley. This smiley is used to inflect a sarcastic or joking statement since we can't hear voice inflection over e-mail. ;-) Winky smiley. User just made a flirtatious and/or sarcastic remark. More of a "don't hit me for what I just said" smiley. :-( Frowning smiley. User did not like that last statement or is upset or depressed about something. :-I Indifferent smiley. Better than a :-( but not quite as good as a :-). :-> User just made a really biting sarcastic remark. Worse than a ;-). >:-> User just made a really devilish remark. >;-> Winky and devil combined. A very lewd remark was just made.

More emoticon sites are found at Random House and at AOL.

1. When you send email or place a comment in the discussion, remember that there is a person on the other end. It is all right to disagree with another person, but it is not all right to be belligerent. Please use the same rules of etiquette as you would use in a traditional classroom. Be an active, involved and independent learner.

Code of Conduct
Electronic communications conducted in the course of a class are "public" communications in the same way that classroom exchanges are public. Your instructor and other students are bound by the same principles of respect, professionalism, and concern as you would find in any interaction in one of the university classrooms or offices.

Using your computer…
It is very important that you have had prior experience using a computer before taking an online course. Keyboarding skills are critical for your success and experience with word processing; email and Web browsing are necessary, as well. 

Skills that you need to know include how to

• Access your Internet service provider account
• Compose, send and read email messages
• Attach files to an email message
• Read and save attached files from an email message
• Use your Web browser to view, navigate, and mark Web sites for later viewing
• Create a document using a word processor
• Save and retrieve files to and from your hard drive

You may find these Technical Tips informative and useful.