Four tips to finish the online course you signed up!

Online learning or MOOC may be like travelling on a airbus 380 with only two passengers, but its an effective way to upgrade or re-alight your skills and knowledge.

Having successfully completed few of these courses in the last one year, here’s few tips from my experience to finish the online learning endeavours you began.

1. Don’t overdo it. Choose only two at given point of time. I recommend only one. Not more. If you choose more you are setting yourself for failure. Yes it’s tempting to sign up, but if you are serious about learning, resist the urge.

2. Go through the lecture and the assignments as soon as they are posted. Before the procrastination strikes, crush it by doing the assignment and viewing the lectures on the very first day they are available. Saves you lot of time and keeps your motivation alive. Tomorrow never comes. It’s not offline class, there will be no one to push or nudge you, so do it when the interest is high.

3. Allocate time. Yes lectures, quizzes are online but you need to allocate them some time if you want to complete them. By allocating I mean, cut something off from you time, watching tv, naps etc. If you don’t allot it before hand you are working against the gradient, you will stall.

4. After the lectures and assignment are over on the first day, everyday remind yourself of the key points from the lectures. Discuss with anyone if possible and look for connecting those ideas with the things that you already know. Revisit lectures if you feel a gap in your understanding and recall.

That’s it. There are many tiny tweaks that you will do while embarking on this. Most of them depend on your personal situation and needs. So go explore.