Unlike a traditional learning environment, online learning requires you to be accountable to yourself. Sure, you will have deadlines, but it is up to you to budget your time to meet them. You won't be going to a class where the instructor is constantly reminding you of due dates. In fact, depending on your online instructor, you might not get reminded of due dates at all. The due dates might be in the course without any reminders.

You can see how important it is for you to have time management skills! 

Your school will most likely teach an Office Applications (word processor, spreadsheet, presentation software) course. This course will probably cover Microsoft Office since it is the most popular Office application. If your school does not use Microsoft Office as its standard, however, you can take advantage of an absolutely free suite of Office applications called OpenOffice. This is a great application suite that contains many of the same features that Microsoft Office does. You can download it from here.

In online education, just like everything else, unexpected things will happen. Your Internet provider might go out of service. Your computer might stop working. Or, life might throw an unexpected curve ball your way. Most of these affect the traditional learning environment, but when they happen during an online course, the extra feelings of being remote and distant from your instructor and the school might add some anxiety. The best way to avoid this is to have a back-up plan. What will you do if your Internet goes down? What will you do if your computer breaks?

The successful online student knows how to use the Internet. If you are going to school online, you will be communicating with your instructors and other students either through Web pages, email, or both. If you are thinking about going to school online, it is important to your academic success to become familiar with these technologies before starting school.

We suggest that you become familiar with the following:

It might sound obvious, but the most important piece of equipment you can own to improve you online learning experience is a good computer. The courses that you take will most likely include multimedia elements that look the best on a newer computer. Depending on your degree program, you might even be required to run specific software on your computer. To be able to run this software, your computer must meet the minimum systems requirements of the software. This is why online schools often list minimum system requirements for their degree programs.

Many students do not realize that there are many steps to getting ready to go to online college that must take place before the first day of class. If you have never gone to school online, the first couple of weeks can be challenging in themselves and the last thing you want to do is to be worried about things outside of what is happening in the classroom.

This section of the Online Learning Success Kit will help to prepare you to succeed in online education. Get ready to get ready!

Get ready for online school with this free Online Learning Success Kit, courtesy of Onlinelearners.org, your source for online learning success!

Each week, more information will be added to this kit. This might be completely new information or old information might be updated. To be the most successful in your online program, either subscribe to the RSS feed, or check back here often!

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