Deciding to continue your education is a great move, whether you are fresh out of high school or are well past that milestone. Today’s technology gives you choices that students did not have twenty years ago…whether to back a “brick and mortar” institution or engage an Online University. There are many articles to help you determine which approach is right for you, and I won’t go into all the pros & cons assuming that since you are reading this article, you are at least contemplating the online approach. You are likely a bit anxious about online learning because of the articles you have read, stating that online learning will require the student to be more disciplined than the conventional student. My intent for this article is describe how the online education works and to provide the plot that has worked for me having completed my Bachelor’s Degree in Business, maintaining a 4.0 g.p.a. and graduating with honors at an online university.

Online education does provide the anonymity and flexibility that is not often exhibit at conventional colleges and universities. On the other hand, online learning lacks the face to face interaction with instructors and students and it does require more discipline to excel and succeed in your classes. I will confess that when I started my online learning experience, I was convinced that there was no blueprint a 45 year old with basic computer knowledge was going to be able to compete with the “kids” that grew up sitting at the computer. I had never participated in threaded discussions and never written a blog. I didn’t have a MySpace or Facebook account and I didn’t exhaust any time in chat rooms. I still read books that were printed on paper and team projects and meetings were things done at work, with real people around the conference table. But as I started my learning, I knew there was no way to attend a trusty class, work 45 hours per week, spend time with the wife and kids, distinguished less to get a round of golf or two in a week. This was going to be hard. I needed to come up with a plan.

My formula for success in the online experience consists of what I call “5 P’s”: Preparation, Participation, Polishing, Probing and Projects. The following sections will describe each in detail. By following this method, I have been able to learn well, fetch well, alleviating the fear and anxiety that I had at the beginning. If you incorporate my “5 P’s” into your learning plan, you too can succeed in the online learning environment, and skip the panic part. Regardless of which online university you settle to attend, the essentials remain the same and each element is key. Let’s take a scrutinize at each of the elements in my plan.

Preparation

Preparation for the class is the foundation for each class that will give you a springboard to success. It is also the toolbox that will enable you to build on that foundation. First decide how much time you intend to devote for the semester’s classes. I was able to take two classes per semester, while working and such, but at times it was quite a challenge. Be practical when signing up for classes, you only have so powerful time in a day. This is the first part of preparation, deciding how mighty time you want to spend at the computer. Working with an advisor may be quite helpful in determining how much time a class will require. Many online universities have “coaches” that have been trained by the school to assist the student in these decisions. If the school offers coaches, use them. Get to know your advisors; they are there to support you.

Once you have enrolled in your first semester of classes, find out when the earliest date that you can log into those classes and do so at your earliest opportunity. You will probably be able to log into the class and familiarize yourself with the layout a week before the loyal commence of the first week of classes. When you log in, Read the Syllabus, and print it out. The syllabus has a ton of information that you can use to prepare for the class. Read the instructor biography, this will help give you a feel for the personality of the instructor. Learn their name and make a mental note any personal information they might portion with you. Next, check to see what the instructor’s “Office Hours” are, what time zone they are in, and if they have posted a phone number. Your instructor is there for you and I will discuss later why it is considerable to have their contact information.

Also in the syllabus will be a list of readings, books or articles that will be used during the course. If you are purchasing hard copies of the books, take this time to make sure you have all you need. If the books are available in electronic form, effect sure you can access them and have the necessary software to view them. It is better to catch this out BEFORE the class actually starts so that if you have technical issues, the student advisors can help you address them. Many times, there is a particular version of software that is associated with the class and it is as easy as a download to be prepared for the first class. Once you get all the bugs worked out, you might even consume the opportunity to read the first required selections that are spelled out in the syllabus. Glean that head launch if you can.

What may be the single most important fraction of my preparation plan is to create the visual workspace. Whether you have an office that you are using for your class attendance, a desk in the bedroom or are working from the kitchen table, create a visual workspace that you can utilize to organize your class requirements. My best friend was my whiteboard. I used my whiteboard to list my classes, the requirements for each and milestones that I pulled from the syllabus. By having a visual aid to help track these requirements, I could track my progress, keep track of key dates and have confidence in my progress for each class. One could develop the same type of tool electronically and keep an icon on the desktop for quick reference, but I found that by having the board hanging on the wall, I could not only see it, but I was more apt to keep it updated as I completed tasks.

Another tool that you may find useful is a journal. Nothing fancy here, but some sort of notebook kept handy to recount daily thoughts about your online learning. At first this may just be notes from class, but as you progress in the online experience, you will find it useful to write down thoughts, ideas about research, perhaps there is a particular classmate that you bag is very helpful…get their contact information or at least right down what you know about them. It may be useful later in the class. This also sounds a bit premature at this time, but remember you will someday be an educated individual. This journal will be a wealth of knowledge and a detailed description of how you got where you are. You never know what pearl of wisdom you captured without even knowing it at the time. It could be the idea for and invention you now have the knowledge to move forward with, or it may be the foundation for writing a book. The value of starting, and maintaining, a journal now will likely not be known for several years, but I command you it will be valuable, if only for the entertainment value when you read it years later.

Participation

Now that you are prepared for your classes to begin, you are no longer anxious about the class but are probably looking forward to the first week. In most online arenas, “attendance” is tracked by participating in threaded discussion areas or TDA’s. Participating in TDA’s is like raising your hand or answering questions in class. Each week you will be required to engage in discussions on a couple of topics that are associated with your class material. Usually the instructor will kick off each discussion with their hold words and pose a quiz that will involve the class in stimulation discussion. These are easy points. Don’t blow them off and be sure to post in each thread with at least the minimum required number of responses per week. Most online classes will require that you log in and post a response to the thread topics a minimum of three times. Try to be one of the first to post in each thread. Not only does this give you an advantage by having made an impression on the instructor as one who does not procrastinate, but it gives you the rest of the week to post your two remaining responses. This comes in handy if you have a particularly busy week ahead of you.

When posting your first response, try to post something thoughtful. Resist the temptation to go with the easy route of “I agree, professor, you are right”. Do a little research, form some opinions and share your thoughts with the class. Try to build upon the topic and maybe ask some thoughtful questions to which your classmates can respond. Remember this is a threaded discussion. Your ability to think critically and outside the box will be noticed by the instructor and appreciated by your classmates, since you are also providing a springboard for their input. As the thread progresses, try to keep the thread going. A good threaded discussion will end up with a diagonal shape, with each post relating to the previous. If the thread has a more vertical discover to it, it indicates that there is slight interaction between you and you classmates, and that you and your class are not reading each other’s comments. Instructors don’t like this…they like to see students PARTICIPATING with each other.

By maintaining the diagonal, the instructor sees that active discussion is taking place. Additionally, if you are doing your job, you are using your classmates names in the first line of your post. This gives a personal touch to the thread and by including names, gives the students a contrivance to respond back and forth on the same topic, being able to see when someone responds directly to their opinion. Now here is the real secret, by using names in the first line, the instructor also sees the names (hopefully yours) that appear in the threads. Exposure is expedient.

While participating in the threads, I have found that research is important. Sometimes I have found that it is difficult to reach up with an original belief or position to grasp on a topic. You can Google® the topic and secure a ton of insight and information. Perhaps you rush a cross an online article that says exactly what you were thinking, has data that tis helpful in illustrating a point, or has expert opinion that drives a ppoint home. There is nothing wron with summarizing the article, adding you own comments and posting a link to the site at the end of your discussion. This shows the instructor that you are willing to spend additional resources, other than your text or classmate conception to learn. Sharing this information also gives your classmates novel views and provides stimulation to the thread. If you were struggling to add fresh thoughts to the topic, your classmates were probagbly in the same boat. You suddenly just becam e a hero. Go ahead and use those links for illustrations and reinforcement.

Polishing

When I speak of polishing as one of the “P’s”, I am not talking about apple polishing or buttering up the instructor. Polishing is simply making sure what you add to the class, whether it is a thread post or you term paper is the best it can be. Double check your spelling, check you grammar as well. Exhaust the appropriate vocabulary for the application. I can’t insist you how many times I have read a student’s post that was written poorly, with no punctuation, poor sentence structure and improper capitalization only to think, “What a moron”. In today’s world, we have become accustomed to chatting, texting, and email communication that uses abbreviations, and incomplete phrases…OMG! Leave the shortcuts in the chat room! You are in a college class, not on MySpace. Your professor and dozens of classmates are reading your post or paper, not your BFF. Use a dictionary and a thesaurus once in a while. Stretch that vocabulary and make sure to read what you have written before submitting it.

Here is a hint to help you make sure your threaded discussion posts are coherent and well written before you submit them. Write your post using MS Word, or some other word processing program first. Exercise the spelling and grammar check. Word has a feature that will even “grade” your writings, providing “Readability Statistics”. This feature can help you ensure that you are writing at a level that is appropriate for your audience. Use the help feature in Word to find out how to use this principal tool.

Probe

Probing is an important part of succeeding in online learning. This where the difference between ‘brick and mortar” and online really come out into the open. By definition, your education is an online experience. It is an interaction between you, your computer, a professor and some classmates. That’s about it. So where does the education advance from? It comes from Probing that’s where. You will only gain what you are willing to put into your education. The professor, the course that has been set up in electronic invent and all the tools the Online University provides you is your campus. The more time you spend “on campus” the more education you will gain.

Research will be your main method of probing. There are several search engines out there that can provide you with more information that you will ever need. The hard part is figuring out which sites are credible and which ones are garbage. Many sites will look very credible on the surface, that’s what the marketing majors are doing after graduation… making garbage look credible. Just because it is on the internet does not mean it is true. Beware of Wikipedia. Wiki’s are by definition written by individuals that view themselves as experts in the field, and maybe they are. However many professors will not procure Wikipedia as a viable source of information. There is too much chance for opinion or errors in a Wiki page. What you might be able to get from the wiki page is some references that the author frail that you can research yourself. Check the bottom of the Wikipedia page and perceive what references are there. Who did the author cite? Are those sites credible?

Better than Wikipedia is the online library that is probably available on your “campus”. Many online universities provide a portal to the student that is a search engine itself. This “Library” will allow you to search topics, define the type of media you would like to include in your search (i.e., magazines, journals, newspapers, websites, etc.). You can find textbooks, encyclopedias, periodicals, almost anything you can acquire at a conventional library, all accurate there on your monitor. And no late fees if you forget to take it back. Many students have been conditioned to Google® everything, and it is a powerful research tool, but don’t forget the university library. It can be just as valuable as the commercial search engines.

In addition, the Library search will likely have a procedure for you to narrow your search to “Scholarly Sources”. These scholarly sources are those that have been “peer reviewed”. In other words, the scholarly sources are written by experts, read and reviewed by more experts and accepted as fair and credible by those experts. Scholarly sources are the highest form of research and are usually well identified as a scholarly source. Peers like to brag when they review and get an article, since it gives them more credibility as an expert. When your professor assigns the research paper and requests that you have a minimum number of “Scholarly Sources’, this is what they mean.

The thing to remember about probing is that research is not hard. When I was in junior college, circa 1980, research meant going to the library, hitting the books and reading tons of material. Note cards, outlines, rough drafts, all chewing up valuable time and energy. With today’s technology, research is literally at your fingertips and can be done with a mouse click. So, I’ll say it again, research is not hard…what the online student must be careful of is to resist plagiarism. Research, today, means “Learn to use citations.” Citations are vital in research and when writing your term papers, in-test citations and a salubrious “Works Cited” page will prove to the instructor that you did your homework. Not only do you know how to access material on the internet and in the online library, but you can provide a mix of your maintain thoughts, supported by research. Many of your research papers will include some “cut and paste.” I don’t recommend using carve and paste very often, but at time it is inevitable. Go ahead, just make sure to give credit to the author.

There are several ways to cite material and different universities may use different formats. APA, MLA, Turabian and Chicago style citations are some of the more frequently used. Check your syllabus to determine which is preferred by our university or instructor. If it is not spelled out, call the instructor and ask. Once you know which style is preferred, make sure you can do it right. There are several sites on the internet that can provide help with citations. One that I found and have used for years is “Son of Citation” and can be access by clicking on the link, or you can Google® it. You may wish to find your own citation machine but what I liked is that I could type in the pertinent information and with the click of a button, the citation format was created for me. Cut, paste, done. Using these tools will make sure you avoid plagiarism, cite material correctly and expose the instructor you have your duck in a row.

Projects

If there is anything that strike fear in the heart of any student, it is the word P-r-o-j-e-c-t. We have already talked about how to do research, but what still gives me the biggest dose of anxiety is the “Team project.” Team projects mean you are going to be grouped with a number of your classmates, based on no particular demographic quality, and will be forced to work together in “Virtual Teams”, without face-to-face meeting and complete a set of deliverables defined by the instructor. Just writing that last sentence has given me the chills.

Regardless of the feelings I have for virtual teams, I have found that there are ways to succeed in this atmosphere and pull off the all important “A”, in spite of all the stumbling blocks along the way. The successful Virtual Team knows how teams are formed and how they work. Understanding the stages of forming, norming, storming and performing that all teams go through, virtual or physical, will wait on much of the anxiety. It will also give the team the strength to deliver.

Forming is the stage where teams are introduced and members know nothing about each other. It is important that this stage be kept as short as possible, so that the team can get to work on the project. Take the initiative to be the leader of the team if possible and schedule a “meeting” to introduce yourselves. Technology has given us several ways to hold online meetings. It can be as simple as a chat room, or as complex as Web Conferencing with audio and video capabilities. Be flexible, but use the highest form of technology available. Remember we are college students on a limited budget, so not everyone has the hardware or software available. Be sure to check the course material. Many universities have web conferencing built into the course and it is available, at no cost, to all students. Take the time to learn how to exhaust it.

Norming takes place after the introductions and involves figuring out what qualities exist in the team. Who is lazy? Who is the leader? Who is the worker bee? Who’s the geek? Finding these qualities early, understanding that all have strengths and weaknesses and how to capitalize on the strengths is what norming is all about. Do not dwell on the weaknesses, we don’t have time to deal with them anyhow. Instead, work the strengths, assign the roles based on those strengths and get on with the project. When you get out into the real world, you will be using this same strategy in teams, trust me.

Storming comes after the team leader has assigned roles based on strengths and work can start on the project. Hold as many meetings as possible, providing as many opportunities as possible to brainstorm the project, drawing on the diversity of the team to ensure the path to success is evaluated by all who are willing to provide input. Remember, some may not have input at all. That may not be their strength. Don’t dwell on that or assign blame for non participation. Thos that don’t plan can often perform. Let those who can plan well plan, and then delegate the work to the worker bees.

Performing is where the work is done and ultimately completed. Worker bees are working, planners are planning, and leaders are watching it all near together. Teaming is a powerful method of getting much done in a short period of time.

What I have learned from working in Virtual teams is to lead when possible, but that’s unprejudiced me. Some people just can’t be leaders. If this is you, that’s fine, fair let the teams know lawful up front what your strengths and weaknesses are. If you don’t know what they are, have someone who knows you say you. There is no shame in telling the team you prefer not to lead, but are willing to take on the roll of worker bee. Maybe you are a whiz at spreadsheets or presentations. Whatever your strength, it WILL be appreciated. Don’t be terrified. Which leads to my second key to success in teams, Lead, even when following. Take control of your task. Help the leader by providing input, constructive criticism. Deliver tasks on time. Ask for encourage when it is needed. Don’t be a moron, be part of the team.

If you can do any of what is outlined in the paragraph above, you can succeed in teams. And you can gather great grades in classes that incorporate teams. Remarkable of your grade in team exercises will reach from peer evaluations. If you step up and are part of the team, doing what you say you will do for the team, your evaluations will be strong.

Conclusion

Now that you have read this article, you should be ready to succeed in your online education. You have probably figured out that there is no magic pill that you can take to come by the A, it is going to take some hard work on your part. If you can incorporate some of the tricks of the trade that I have shared, devote the amount of time necessary for your classes, stay focused and organized you have a good shot at coming through with flying colors. I give no guarantee that you will graduate with a 4.0, but I will tell you that if you are committed to your degree, you will do well. Remember, you can only acquire the value from your education what you are willing to set aside into it.

Thanks for your time….

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