Resources for Academic Skills

Time Management

Many online students find that the hardest aspect of taking online courses is not the material they are learning, but anaging their time well. The following resources developed by Counseling and Psychological Services at KSU and also adapted from the Center for Academic Innovation at the University of Michigan under a CC BY 4.0 License by the Coles College of Business can help you plan your time and create a schedule that will help you succeed in online courses:

Efficient Time Scheduling

One very important aspect of effective time management is planning and creating a schedule. Adding multiple classes to an already busy schedule (work, family, friends, sports, vacations, etc.) can quickly become overwhelming. Follow along with Mo during his week to understand the importance of keeping a weekly schedule.

That was a lot to keep up with! Luckily, there is a simple solution to make sure you always have the time you need.

This next module is designed to teach you the basics of building a schedule.

KSU’s Counseling & Psychological Services has also compiled some scheduling tips that are worth reading through.

Study Skills

Note Taking

Online courses still require note taking! Your professors may give you video lectures to review, outside materials to watch or interact with, and plenty of reading from your text(s) to help guide your learning experience. Chek out the following note taking resources:

How to Take Better Notes: The 6 Best Note Taking Systems

Active Reading Strategies by Khan Academy

Active Reading

You can increase your active reading by doing some of the following:

Underline or highlight key words and phrases as you read. When you return to it later on, you can easily see which points you identified as important. Be selective - too much highlighting won't help.
Make annotations in the margin to summarize points, raise questions, challenge what you've read, jot down examples and so on. You can do this in printed books or etexts. This takes more thought than highlighting, so you'll probably remember the content better. (Use sticky notes if you don't want to mark the text.)
Read critically by asking questions of the text. Who wrote it? When? Who is the intended audience? Does it link with other material you've studied in the module? Why do you think it was written? Is it an excerpt from a longer piece of text?
Test yourself by reading for half an hour, putting the text away and jotting down the key points from memory. Go back to the text to fill in gaps.
Look for 'signposts' that help you understand the text - phrases like 'most importantly', 'in contrast', 'on the other hand'.
Explain what you've read to someone else.
Record yourself reading the module material or your notes, and listen to the recording while you're travelling or doing household chores.