Skills for Online Success

In my library 203 class, Online Social Networking, one of the units we cover is if online courses are right for you and how to succeed in the online classroom. Some people think online learning is easier and just requires the right computer. This is not true especially if you want to be a successful online student. I took a quiz to see if online learning was right for me and the quiz said I was ready. However, when I started reading over the skills required to be successful, I could pinpoint exactly where my weakness and strengths are.

My strengths would be I’m very comfortable with technology. Technology has been a big part of my life for a long time, so it’s basically second nature to me. I’m comfortable with interacting with people online and feel that I have strong communication skills. I’m self-motivated because library school is something I have wanted to do for a long time. I will admit that sometimes after a long day it’s hard to muster up the motivation. I can be self-discipline when I want to be it just hard to come up with it unless there is deadline coming up. I’ve never been good at getting things done early. I always get them done on time.

Now my weakness or what I consider my gray area would be time management and organization. I have both of these skills it’s just I get busy or lazy and forget to use them. When I do use them (and I’ve been getting better at using them) I’m very successful with accomplishing things. The biggest weakness I have is procrastination  I have tried beating it out of me, but it’s very engrained into me.

Because I’m aware of my strengths and weakness I’ve started implementing things I learned from this unit and things I figured out on my own to be successful. Three tips that I have used for success are: designate regular intervals, create a desktop folder and create a browser folder. I created a folder in my Dropbox that is separated out into a folder for each semester, with a folder for each class. I took my netbook and made my classroom (D2L – Desire to Learn) the homepage along with bookmarking all the other important San Jose State library pages. The one thing I still have to do is set-u p a calendar. I also have learned that my house has to many distracts and have a designated library I go to for studying.

Hopefully by putting all of this into practice,  and organizing myself a bit more the first semester, I will be on my way to being very successful in school. I’m always looking for tidbits on improving my time management and organization skills along with battling the procrastination bug, please share in the comments any tips.