Working Smarter, Not Harder

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You've probably heard the phrase, "work smarter, not harder.'" No marks are given for being the student who spends the most time studying.

Strategies

Prioritize.

Decide what tasks must be done immediately, over the next couple of days, or over the next week. Instead of only recording deadlines for assignments in your calendar, set start dates to remind you when you should be beginning to work on assignments. You may need to adjust your start dates, but this step will help you to avoid doing all of your work at the last possible minute.

In an online course, leaving work until the last minute is setting yourself up to be a victim of technical problems. You should build into your schedule some time for technical problems, as they seem to happen most when you can afford them the least.

Set goals for each study session and for each task within a session.

Spend a few minutes at the beginning of each study session to decide what you are going to do. Assess your progress at an appropriate interval (every 30 minutes for longer study sessions, every 10-15 minutes for shorter sessions).

Summarize work and set tasks for the next session.

Take a few minutes at the end of each study session to review your progress. Identify what task or tasks you need to do at your next study session, and any information or resources you need to get before working on the course again, such as asking the instructor a question or requesting resources from the library.