Ten Mistakes to Avoid in Online Courses

Taking online courses is a convenient way to your degree. Taking online courses from online colleges have their own specific difficulties and pitfalls. Here are ten mistakes to avoid when taking online courses.

1. Don’t Miss Your Online Class Meetings. It’s easy to take online courses for granted with the attitude of playing catch up later. Some courses score and award points based on class interaction. When in the online meetings, be sure to reap the full benefits and participate. Being passive about your on line education only hurts your own educational gain.

2. Don’t forget to Submit Your Assignments on Time. You might have executed your assignment, or waited until the last minute. A computer glitch might ruin your attempts to submit it ahead of time, or you might have just forgotten. Late assignments may not be acceptable at all, or there may be a reduction in points. Get ahead and stay ahead of assignments. Classes can be accessed anywhere, so unlike class-based courses, there’s really little wiggle room for excuses.

3. Don’t forget your Offline Meetings. Online courses may offer 100% online interaction, while others may have offline meetings or class interaction.

4. Don’t flirt. The online community has become so interactive and casual that people may forget social and professional boundaries. It’s easier than ever to auto pilot into chit chat with peers and instructors, and forget who you’re talking to. It’s better to err on the side of formality than to teeter past the line of friendly. In the event there seems to be mutual interest, divert interactions outside of the online class interaction. Because peers and instructors, just like others online may or may not be involved or married, be leery about initiating or encouraging interaction until you have personal face-to-face time.

5. Don’t interact with your instructor casually. Keep it formal. Some instructors are not receptive to elevating yourself to casual banter. Despite easier access and lack of physical boundaries in which the instructor appears at the head of the class.

6. Don’t be surprised to find unprofessional students, but refrain from this conduct yourself or pointing out others. Unprofessional students might interact with students as if they are on a friendship level, including the use of slang and making opinionated remarks assuming that you’re on board with their position and will LOL at potentially serious subject matter.

7. Don’t procrastinate and wait until the last minute. An online course is all about self discipline. An instructor may cut you some slack if you happen to find one so oriented, but the assumption is that you can handle your time without oversight.

8. Assume you may have to pick up slack on team projects. Peers on projects might not show up for online meetings, not put in the required time, contribute their fair burden of work, or provide other than their presence. Your instructor might not care, and may rely on team dynamics to pull through or show its weakness, with grades reflected accordingly.

9. Remember online courses are competing with the myth that they are not as rigorous as offline courses. Take the subject matter, syllabus and course seriously. Online courses may have timed quizzes and tests that show the clocking ticking away the time before you’re locked out of a test. For some people, this countdown might be jarring, because unlike a class based test, a student does not have the peering at them from the test.

10. Don’t forget to proof read and carefully review online content or quizzes. Some people are more text based and rely on paper and pen quizzes versus online testing. Print out your quizzes and study guides, etc., to help with transitioning work offline and studying. Once the button for an online assignment or test is selected, there’s no recall, raising your hand or erasing.