9 Tips and Strategies For Learning Online Successfully

How do you learn at your own pace and successfully achieve your goals? 

These are some of the tips and tricks that have helped me so far:

1. Set daily goals for studying

Set goals that are achievable and within your capacity daily for any course you’re undertaking. Write them down where they’ll haunt you (I mean this), or you can always see them. These daily goals should culminate in the achievement of your bigger picture.

Also, reward yourself for achieving any of your set goals, no matter how small.

2. Schedule time to study on your calendar

Preferably a digital calendar or to-do list app that will send you notifications ahead of your scheduled study time. If for any reason, you cannot study at any given time, try and make up for it as soon as possible.

3. Create a dedicated learning environment

Designating a dedicated space for learning can enhance your concentration and productivity. Choose a quiet area where you can minimise distractions, and ensure you have a comfortable chair, proper lighting, and necessary learning resources at hand.

4. Keep yourself accountable/Get an accountability partner

It might seem easy to be accountable but you will find that we tend to cut ourselves a lot of slack if we do not have to report to anybody. If you realise that you cannot do this on your own, you should get an accountability partner – someone you share your goals with, whom you’re sure will help you reach them by adding pressure where necessary. This person can be a friend, a spouse, a roommate, or even your online buddy. You can also seek out, join, or form a community with other individuals taking the same course.

5. Take notes

Write down your own explanation of what you have learned in each module. This way, you can easily refer back to it in a quicker and more summarised form. It can also serve as documentation of your journey, in case you need to help someone else through the same course.

6. Do one thing at a time

Try not to overwhelm yourself with too much information or do too much at the same time. There are so many free online resources to learn different things and it can lead the temptation of trying to learn many things that seem related at once, but this might later prove to be counterproductive. 

Online school is still school. Each course must have a dedicated period of lecture/study if you are to fully benefit from it.

7. Take breaks

Allocate time for brain timeout. Use this period to distract yourself from learning. This is essential to realign your focus, especially if you catch yourself watching the same clip or reading the same paragraph multiple times before understanding it.

Your brain will need this time to marinate what you have already learned.

8. Keep to deadlines

Aside from keeping to the deadlines you set for yourself, try to submit your course assignments on time, preferably, ahead of schedule.

Even though it’s possible to reset your deadlines, the more you do that, the more your goals will take longer to be achieved.

9. Actively engage in discussions

Participating in online discussions, forums, or virtual classrooms can provide valuable insights and perspectives from peers and instructors. Engage actively, ask questions, and contribute to discussions to deepen your understanding of the subject matter and establish connections with other learners.

It is easy to be distracted or give up if you don’t have a larger-picture goal that is fuelling your desire to finish the course you’re taking. So, before you start an online course, or any course at all, ask yourself what you aim to achieve with it. Write it down, print it, and hang it on your wall, if you have to, but let that be the ginger you need to pick up the pace when you find yourself slacking.

I hope you find these tips helpful. Let me know in the comments, what strategies do you use?

Pro Tip:

If you are new to online learning you will likely encounter an eye problem known as computer vision syndrome, also referred to as digital eye strain.

According to American Optometric Association, computer vision syndrome describes a group of eye- and vision-related problems that result from prolonged computer, tablet, e-reader and cell phone use. It can be alleviated by taking short breaks away from screens.

What I found most helpful for this issue was putting on dark mode as the default setting on all my devices, including all apps that allow for this setting.