Mindtools : How to Ace Online Courses

How to Ace Online Courses

Beta Version 0.2 - Initial Public Release -- Some sections are not complete, but there is plenty of information here that will help you get excellent grades in any online course. Recently added: Links to help avoid plagiarism.

This mini-course provides you with the basic information you need to do your best when taking online courses. This is written from the standpoint of an instructor (Anthony Birch, Ph.D.). These recommendations are based on my experience and my inside knowledge of higher education. First-time online students may find this particularly useful.

Core Principles

To get the best grade, you need to:

Understand the Instructor - Take the instructor's view
Understand the Course - Learn the course objectives and educational model
Know the Material - Learn how to manage time and build knowledge
Participate - Learn what instructors look for
Use the System to Your Advantage
Avoid these Mistakes: Plagiarism

1. Understand the Instructor - Take the instructor's view

Instructors tend to teach and grade the way they were taught. The way they were taught and the expectations they have for higher education depend largely on the nature of the school they attended. The U.S. has a 3 or 4 tier system of schools. The highest-rated schools (Ivy League, major private and state research-oriented universities) are extremely demanding and tend to produce graduates who will be equally demanding on their students. It is easy enough to find your instructor's resume or CV on the Internet. Is your instructor from an institution famous for meticulous research and high academic standards? If so, expect your instructor to demand something similar from you. If your instructor graduated from one of the lower tier schools, expect fewer demands. There is no hard and fast rule here, however. Use this information as general and initial guidance. Any instructor from any school may fall into the "hard" or "easy" category. Much depends on the the overall motives, time commitment, and objectives of the instructor.

Also check any publications by your instructor. Typically, these can be found on the instructor's home page provided by the college or university. What style do they exhibit? Are they free-flowing and speculative, full of diagrams and facts, or heavy on references? As far as papers go, your instructor may be looking for something similar from you.

Try to get some idea of the time commitments of your instructor. Most online schools require a 24 hour turn around time on responses to student posts or questions and no more than 72 hours on graded assignments. Check your school's course schedule for your instructor's name. If your instructor is already teaching several other courses at your school, you know that his time is limited. Many online instructors, particularly in popular service courses in business, math, or social sciences, may be teaching for THREE OR MORE schools at the same time. This means the instructor's time is extremely limited. The instructor will be looking for ways to grade quickly. You can ask the online instructor if he or she is also teaching at another school. As far as I know there are, unfortunately, no rules limiting the number of courses an instructor can teach simultaneously online.

2. Understand the Course - Learn the course objectives and educational model

Education today is based on two core concepts:

Outcome Based Education
Constructivist Learning

You will see these concepts reflected in the syllabus and the supporting documents (assignments, discussion questions, grading rubrics, research tools, links, and bibliographies) for your course.

Outcome Based Education

Outcome based education works with the idea that unless there are certain measurable outcomes, there is no point to the course. Outcomes should improve either you or the world in some significant way.

Much depends on the phrasing used to describe the course. A course with the objective to "explore the history of philosophy" has no specific outcome. The very same course with the objective "explore the history of philosophy in order to demonstrate how social inequities have been addressed from Aristotle through Kant" is more specific and meets the educational template required in today's courses.

Read the course syllabus VERY carefully. If it has links, explore all the links. The syllabus is used by course designers, administrators, and instructors as the primary way to show that the course has specific objectives. The OBJECTIVES may be quite general; perhaps only 3 or 4 will be listed. Nevertheless, you should be keep them in mind. There may be a section in the syllabus with a heading like "in this course you will learn how to..." These are the specific OUTCOMES that you will be tested on in one way or another.

More specific objectives and outcomes are repeated in each MODULE or WEEK of the course. Again, read these carefully. In a well-designed course, you will be evaluated on how well you meet the expectations set up each week.

Constructivist Learning

Favorite watchwords of constructivist learning are:

Guide on the Side - not Sage on the Stage
Let students construct their own knowledge

For better or for worse, constructivist learning is now the official template for virtually all education, from primary and secondary levels through college and corporate training. Constructivist learning move the the instructor "to the side" of the classroom. Instead of standing in front of the classroom (metaphorically, in the online classroom) pontificating, the instructor takes on the role of the coach or cheerleader, helping you learn on your own. Rather than impart specific knowledge, the instructor should allow students interact with each other, exchange ideas and information, and develop their own understanding.

Constructivist learning has its recent origins in 1960s when students demanded "relevance" in education, French deconstruction made its inroads into the intellectual establishment, and the notions that "authoritative knowledge" and "tradition" were good things were undermined. This was followed by the the demand for "horizontal" business management models and emergence of group task forces in science and engineering. Online education fit fairly well into these established models, since it relies heavily on individual study, made group work possible to a certain extent, and minimized the role of the instructor in knowledge transmission. Usually, you can look to instructors and course designers to provide you with the opportunity and the means to increase your knowledge rather than to directly inform you.

The constructivist model will almost always be followed in courses delivered by for-profit schools like University of Phoenix. Except in disciplines and courses where they are very impractical, group projects are often mandatory. Certainly "student interaction" in the form of responding to posts will always be required.

Understanding the purpose of the course -- its specific objectives -- and its educational model gives you quite an advantage. Poor to average students look at the assignments and discussions as tasks to be dispensed with. The best students (that would be you!) understand the point of the game and know how to play it even if they don't like it! The "tasks" listed in the syllabus -- the things you are graded on -- are opportunities to show that you are learning in the way prescribed by the course: you are using the course material to interacting with your peers in order to "create" knowledge. We'll see exactly how to do this in the following sections.

3. Know the Material - Learn how to manage time build knowledge

First, you should disabuse yourself of the notion advanced by the relentless advertising on online degree mills -- and even state universities -- that online learning is fast, easy, and something that can be "done in spare time."

While there may be some certification or degree programs that can be completed with minimal effort, don't count on it. Be suspicious of claims that sound too good to be true. If you can, talk to someone who has participated in the program or taken the course.

Almost all online courses follow a compressed learning model. College-level 3-credit courses are usually 6-8 weeks, so students need to learn the same material as traditional students (16 week semesters) in half the time.

Online courses require continuous input and continuous effort. Often, anything more than two days of failure to work on the course will set you behind in the course.

The basic solution to these constraints is simple and obvious:

Stay 3 days to one full week ahead
Work on your course at the same time each day

My research shows that students spend from 5 to 10 hours per week per course. Some courses may require as little as 3 hours per week. I recommend that you plan on at least one to two hours per day every day when you sign up for an online course.

NOTE: If you find that your 3-credit college courses typically take only a few hours per week and are not very demanding, it's highly likely that something is very wrong with your program or the school you are attending. Consider the fact that in a standard semester the total number of contact hours (classroom hours) is a minimum of 40. Even if you do no reading and just show up for class a 3-credit college course requires this minimum. Often the total amount of time commmited to the course is 2-3 times this minimum. If you are to accomplish the same thing in an 8-week online course, you have your work cut out for you!

There is no royal road to learning. It was true 2400 years ago when the first university in the West was founded (Plato's Academy) and it is true today: there is no replacement for reading, writing, memorization, questions, dialogue, and most of all honest toil. To be certain, there are some fields that require less toil than others, and your own natural capacities come are always a factor.

There are some proven techniques for learning that apply to almost any field that uses a textbook. We can call this constellation of techniques the conveyor belt technique, and its outline is very simple:

Anticipate the expected outcomes - use the power of the subconscious mind
Keep the information coming
SQ3R

Let's expand on these points.

For each unit read the outcomes listed in the course module. Study the END of the corresponding chapter in your textbook. There are almost always additional summaries, questions, exercises, learning tips, and references listed there. It is highly probable that your course designer and/or instructor utilized this same information for making quizzes and assignments. Some of this will start you thinking about the concepts and issues subconsciously.

Staying ahead gets the "conveyor belt" moving and keeps it going. By staying ahead, I don't necessarily mean that you submit all your work ahead of time. In some cases, this is not possible in any case. But you should get the textbook at least one week early, and login to the course 3 or more days ahead of schedule. When you login for the first time, follow the recommendations listed above (Understand the Instructor and Understand the Course), and then get your conveyor belt moving! You will want to:

Click on every link in the course
Find and review all the assignments and an discussion questions
Copy and keep handy the grade weightings for each component of the course
Find any related Internet resources, including the publisher's site for the textbook

This last tip, finding the publisher's site, can be very helpful. Many publishers provide a site for the textbook, complete with quiz questions and study guides. There is a good chance your instructor took some questions and exercises from this site!

Read in small bits every day. Studies show that four 15 minute periods with a few minutes rest between reading and study sessions are better than one hour of continuous reading and study. Don't get distracted by "necessary" home projects of surfing the Internet between 15 minute study sessions.

Many years ago school children were taught the SQ3R method of study and learning. The same method is still good: Survey, Question, Read, Review, Rite. (Sometimes the "Rs" take a different form, such as "Read, Recite, Review.) For each unit, survey the material, paying special attention to the objectives, as noted above. Formulate any questions you may have. What are YOUR learning objectives? What do you need clarified? Read the text. Review the text. Since this is and online course, you also need to review what is online at this point. This includes

Information provided by the instructor
Texts and references provided by your peers in the discussion

These last two points are particularly important, as we discuss in the next two sections of this mini-course, below. Finally, you are ready to write. In most cases, this will be a response to other posts and a weekly assignment.

4. Participate - Learn what instructors look for

In constructivist online learning, participation counts for more than in the traditional live class. In a typical traditional classroom, it is often possible to sit in the back of the class and remain silent. As long as your all your work is on time and excellent, you can get an A. In an online course, participation can count from 15-40% of your grade. Usually, this means responding to one or more discussion questions per week. Instructors need to grade these. In the case of for-profit schools, they are literally forced to grade them according to protocols and rubrics dictated by the school. As a student, you need to understand how this is done.

Remember that the instructor has limited time. Grades need to be turned in promptly. If there are 20 students in the class and each has written 200 words for the week (very low for some classes), grading can take quite a bit of time if there is not a method. This is why most courses will use a grading rubric like the one below.

Initial Response Grading Rubric

Distinguished

Proficient

Needing Improvement

Unsatisfactory

Superior insight and understanding of relevant concepts and arguments

20-18

Good/Basic insight and understanding of relevant concepts and arguments

17-16

Apparently limited or flawed understanding of relevant concepts and arguments

15-14

Post indicating little preparation or understanding

Exceptional use of reasoning and course materials to support view

14-13

Good/Basic use of critical reasoning or course materials to support view

12-11

Limited, or incorrect, use of reasoning or course materials to support view

10-9

Limited or no use of course materials

Clear, concise, adequate length, easy to understand

Could be more clear; too long or too short

Unclear of difficult to understand

Very difficult to understand

0-2 minor mistakes in grammar, APA style, or logical organization

2-3 minor mistakes in grammar, APA style, or logical organization

4 or more mistakes in grammar, APA style, or logical organization

Poor grammar throughout, spelling mistakes, no citation

50-45

41-39

33-21

Reply Grading Rubric

Distinguished

Proficient

Needing Improvement

Unsatisfactory

All of the following apply:

Identifies important concepts and/or arguments in original post

Provides very helpful challenge, question, or clarification to original post; excellent use of critical reasoning; engages other students

Exhibits knowledge of scope and themes of entire weekly discussion, not just posts of one or two other learners

One or more of the following apply:

Identifies some, but not all important concepts and/or arguments in original post

Provides good challenge, question, or clarification to original post; good use of critical reasoning; engaged, but probably could do more

Shows knowledge of entire discussion, but may have missed some important posts

One or more of the following apply:

Little identification of important concepts and/or arguments in original post

Limited use of challenges, questions, or clarifications to original post

Evidently limited knowledge of entire discussion

One or more of the following apply:

Short, cursory replies

Number of replies does not meet Syllabus requirements

50-45

44-40

39-35

34-0

Obviously, you will want to do all the things necessary to get into the highest category -- everything on the left side of the chart. In addition, you want to use the system and the resources available to you to learn as much as possible, as easily as possible.

Note that the rubric has two categories: Initial Response and Reply Response. Let's discuss each of these.

The Initial Reply

Each week you will have one or more discussion questions that will require an initial response by you. Some questions are just a survey; the instructor wants to know your initial impression of an idea or concept that will be taught. If that is the case, just go ahead and answer it as early in the week as possible.

Most discussion questions, however, amount to short essay using the textbook or other course materials as a basis. For these, just follow the steps below.

1. Stay ahead of the game by reading all the discussion questions for the week FIRST, before you do any reading. In some cases, the discussion questions are not shown to you until the week starts. In this case, you have already done the reading because you have taken this course and you know that's best -- right?

2. Copy the discussion questions to open page on your word processing program (or, in Windows, just use Notepad). Also have the grading rubric for the discussion questions printed out and in front of you. As you read through the text (following the SQ3R method, above), take notes, and underline the text as necessary.

As ideas occur to you that relate to the discussion question type them into your open document underneath the discussion question. (Or jot them down, if you are away from your computer, or even at work during the day.)

3. Finally, compose your answer, being sure that you meet the requirements of the grading rubric. If the rubric calls for you to demonstrate knowledge of the text, a brief quote as part of your answer usually suffices. Do not, however, attempt to "beef up" your answer just by providing an over long quotation. The instructor knows what is in the text! You job, in most cases, is to show that you understand and can apply the concepts there. Rephrase the principle or concept, giving an example, if possible. Be concise and clear. Studies show that responses over about 150 words do not get read by other students. You want people to respond to you! If the question calls for your "view" or "opinion" on an issue, state this in the first sentence. Grab the reader's attention. If you are writing your response in a word processor, use the spell check feature.

4. Post your response. If you are several days to a week ahead in the course, you may need to wait to post your response. Perfect! More time for the "conveyor belt" to work and for you to take advantage of subconscious processing. In many cases, it is best to wait 24 hours, especially if the question is difficult or contentious. Re-read your response one more time, taking the view of the instructor -- with the grading rubric in front of you. In some cases, you don't want to be the first respondent. Perhaps you are unsure of your answer. In that case, wait for several other students to answer to see how the discussion progresses. In most cases, you will not want to wait more than a few days. Responses that come late in the week (or module time frame) do not get read by other students. You deprive yourself of many benefits by posting late.

The Reply Response

Some schools and some instructors will not grade you separately on each reply. Instead, they may grade you on the number and kinds of your reply to other students. In any case, the basic principles of grading replies to other students are the same. According to principles of collaborative learning and constructivist models, you are expected to help other students learn by providing them with questions, clarifications, or additional information. There is a specific technique that works very well, particularly on difficult or controversial topics:

1. Begin by agreeing (if at all possible) with some part of what your peer seems to be saying. Also, for clarity, briefly restate what you fellow student is saying. For example: "Jeff, I know what you mean about..." or "Jeff, you seem to be saying that...".

2. Make your point. Politely agree or disagree, using the text, your personal experience, or some other fact to back up what you say.

3. Close with a question or other comment that indicates that you are willing to discuss the matter further. It does not matter that the person you are responding to may never read or reply to you! What matters is that you fulfill the expectations of the instructor and follow the course rubric.

5. Use the System to Your Advantage

Once past the BETA phase, this section of the course will include:

When and how to withdraw from a course
Handling the Group Project
How to consolidate posted information
How to select the best online programs
Working with "The Boss" to get a free education
How to analyze an online course, using a sample online environment

Please contact webmaster at mindtools.net if you would are interested in future versions of this course.

6. Avoid these Mistakes

Plagiarism

Many people do not understand what plagiarism is or why it is so important to avoid within the U.S. educational system. The rules regarding plagiarism stem from provisions in the U.S. constitution and a guiding principle of U.S. education that individual creative work, which often involves a departure from socially accepted or historically established work, is of great value.

Two good links regarding plagiarism:

http://www.plagiarism.org/

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/589/01/