When I started my online learning experience here at OSU, online classes were not a new thing for me; however things have changed quite a bit since I completed my last program. I now have a family, a career and various other obligations that I must be involved with. So as a result, the experience of being a student has also changed.
In general, I am a very organized person. When it comes to taking online courses, I can usually plan my week out accordingly and stick with my schedule. I would consider this to be a strong point of mine; however I have found that it is not so easy to stick with a schedule when you have absolutely no idea how long an assignment might take. This term I am taking a computer programming class, in addition to this class. The biggest obstacle that I have discovered with the assignments in that class is the amount of time it takes to write, debug and test a program. For example, last week I spent about 20 hours on one assignment, where 15 hours of that time was spent testing and debugging. Obviously this doesn’t leave me with a lot of time for my other course work. After learning the hard way, I have decided to reverse the order in which I complete my work, starting with an assignment that has a predictable duration followed by the unpredictable work.
This class has helped me to focus on my time management a little closer; it has also helped me to look for ways to maximize my learning. One of the biggest eye openers for me was finding my peak and valley times. It’s interesting that this seems like such a trivial concept; however, it never crossed my mind in the past. Taking this into consideration, I have discovered that I retain more from lectures and reading, when I study in the early afternoon, as opposed to early morning when I normally try to study. I have also learned that it is okay to take frequent breaks, in fact it is beneficial. This term I learned that I am left brained and a multimodal learner. Learning this information has helped prepare me to adapt my learning to best fit my learning style. After using the OSU library’s academic search function, I was thrilled to discover a tool that tracks my sources. This is a tool in which I will use for any research I conduct from here on out.
Moving forward into future terms, I will be adopting these skills and techniques, as well as many other methods learned in this class.
Hopefully you managed to balance work, school and family! It’s such a challenge. Good luck to you and pleasure to share the class with you!
Managing work, school, and family is a juggling act! Just keep on pushing through, and I know you’ll do just fine! Good luck!
I’m sharing the pain with you! I’m going to be living a different life here very shortly. My daughter is due any day now. So I have no idea how to manage life with a newborn yet.
Isn’t this whole “online experiment” just that?! I applaud the way you stick with it, David, especially as you figure out how in the world you can juggle so much more than when you first developed your organizational, motivational, educational strengths! You deserve the great take-aways you’ve discovered this term for all of your hard work and curiosity. Great work… keep it up!