Online Education Study Skills for Students with Disabilities

Participating in online education means that you’ll be in charge of your learning process. You’ll need to brush up on your study skills, make sure your time-management skills are up to speed, and have a good sense of how you most effectively approach your learning process. You’ll also want to make sure you’ve done the practice work necessary to be completely comfortable with whatever assistive technology you may need.

Effective Online Education Strategies
In an online education environment, you’ll take responsibility for your own learning process and outcomes – not just your grades, but what you actually learn and can apply. As an adult learner determined to succeed in your college program, no doubt you’re ready to assume this higher level of control and independence.

But just in case some pointers might be welcome, many of your fellow online learners have found the following tips helpful:

• Get organized early, before the class begins if possible.
• Create a process for every new class so you can easily get back in the groove: for example, create folders for assignments, reading materials, and research resources; assemble an online course notebook, if you use one; reviews course assignments so you can be thinking about them in advance; skim the reading so you’ll have a sense of the course coverage.
• Understand how your technology works before you start your class, including your word processing software (generally, Word or WordPerfect), presentation software (such as PowerPoint), Internet browser (for example, Firefox or Internet Explorer), your e-mail system, and whatever assistive technology you will be using.
• Commit to a specific time each week to devote to your class – perhaps Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday evenings from 7:00-10:00 p.m., or some variation of this. Make sure friends and family know this time is as taken as if you were sitting in a classroom on campus. Test-drive your schedule so you can see what sorts of obstacles/challenges might arise, and put together strategies for dealing with them before they occur.
• If you are employed outside your home, on the weekend, line out what class work you can do over your lunch hour, to make use of this “found time” of an extra hour (or five) every week.
• Take control of your online education environment: no distractions, no phones. Go for quiet unless background or white noise helps you focus.
• Check or log-in to your course website frequently, so you won’t miss any announcements.
• Check the course calendar so you’re always aware of class deadlines and assignment due dates.
• Do the prep necessary to turn your assignments in on time; that means breaking your assignments into chunks of activity and scheduling those activities in on a consistent timeline.
• Let your instructor know about any problems or issues as soon as you’re aware of them so you can jointly work out acceptable solutions; even if you spend a week figuring out a solution, your instructor won’t know that unless you let him or her know!
• Use the online collaborative tools to build relationships with your fellow students, create study groups, and find colleagues with whom you can build long-term professional connections.
• Plan to submit your assignments a day early in case you run into technology glitches. But keep in mind your local public library offers Internet access as well as e-mail access in a pinch, and the librarians are great sources of research and technology expertise.
• Experiment with study techniques to find the ones that work best for you, for example, using a variety of strategies to remember key concepts, testing yourself to see how well you understand chapter points, using visual aids (posted notes, highlighted text, graphical concept maps) to enhance learning.
• Brush up on your time management skills!!!!

For more good ideas about effective online education, check out:

How to Manage Time and Priorities - Time management guidelines, from How to Be a Successful Student (1991) by Donald Martin.

Becoming a Successful Online Student - From the Indiana College Network, a collection of student-tested tips and guidance.

Study Strategies for Online Courses - Great advice on activities like textbook-reading, note-taking, test-taking, time management, and participating in an online class.

Communicating Online
In online education, there are two types of group (or two-person) communication: synchronous (which means that all the students are online with their instructor at the same time) and asynchronous (students and instructor post and read messages at times that are most convenient to them).

In your online classroom, face-to-face interaction is replaced by fellow students sharing their stories and knowledge through comments and anecdotes posted at the class website. Whether your course’s mode of communication is synchronous or asynchronous (or a combination of both), it’s important for you to stay connected, to share your own stories and knowledge.

In fact, this is one of the major benefits of studying with other adult learners – you’ll all bring a wealth of personal and professional expertise to the class that can enrich and expand the course content well beyond your instructor’s knowledge. Your experiences as a student with a disability may broaden and deepen the classroom interaction for everyone, if you are comfortable sharing this information.

Take the Initiative
Like you, your instructor will be checking in online on a frequent and regular basis to post information, course documents, and resources, and to respond to student communications. In order to get the most from your course, stay in touch with your instructor. Let him or her know if you’re struggling to master a given chapter, need clarification with an assignment, or would like to suggest a resource that you’ve discovered.

Take the initiative to let your instructor know that you’re actively engaged in the course, and the likelihood is that he or she will want to make the extra effort to make sure the class is a great one for you.