Structuring Your Day for Online College Classes

It’s no secret that the biggest perk of earning an online college degree is the luxury of taking classes from the comfort of your home. While you might be excited to forgo all those classroom visits and pesky class schedules for a self-determined timetable, you must maintain some semblance of structure and order in your work.

One of the unspoken pitfalls of online education is the temptation for students to procrastinate or neglect coursework in the absence of any professor monitoring their progress. While you will have to meet real deadlines on your work, you may feel less compelled to do it without a professor constantly reminding you of your responsibilities. But that’s the implicit risk with online education: a student must trust their ability to dig in and enforce self-discipline to complete assignments and read the course materials thoroughly.

So, how exactly can a student structure their day to meet the goals of the online college courses?

Write out a realistic schedule

Without an actual schedule planned out, there’s no way you can maintain a consistent regimen for your online coursework. A schedule-free “school day” could lead to unhealthy study habits for your online college classes (cramming lessons at the last minute, for example). Scheduling is about the easiest thing you can do to prioritize unlimited free time, or time severely limited by other obligations, like working a day job or raising a family.

You should take a realistic look at the activities that dominate an average day and try to fit in at least three periods of earnest studying, where free time is possible, or in the place of activities that can be easily moved. If you don’t have pressing tasks to take up most of your day, you should try to devote a few solid hours of coursework and studying every day so you can always be up-to-date on assignments. A few weeks into the schedule, you should be able to recognize your more productive periods, so adjust your schedule to align with those times to maximize your time.

Alternate course materials

Another drawback to working on classes online is that you run the risk of “burning out” on a class if you devote too much time to it in one sitting. For example, you may end up doing so many problems for your calculus class that you can’t bring yourself to study for your equally important world history test.

There are a few ways you can prevent such a case of information overload. If you’re taking several online classes per semester, be sure to distribute your workload evenly to address the requirements of each course. Don’t spend more than an hour studying any one subject to give yourself ample studying time for your other classes. Alternating your course materials is one of the most important things you can do to structure your online course load. If you don’t work on everything with equal effort, you might find yourself focusing much more attention on one course to the detriment of the other,s you could be tempted to stop working altogether

Regular contact with classmates or instructors

You can also structure your online coursework by reminding yourself that you’re not the only one learning college-level material from home. Keep in contact with your classmates and your online instructor through regular email correspondence or video chatting, and use the time for instructive dialogues about the coursework. You can voice your concerns or issues about a particular course, ask for advice, or simply vent your frustrations. It’s easy to feel alone in the online college experience, and maintaining contact with your peers will go a long way towards helping you feel more at ease with your work.