Technology at Work

Tips for Ensuring Success Virtually
Academic Affairs Shares Nine Pointers on Adapting to Learning from a Distance
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The Office of Academic Affairs continues to work around the clock to accommodate students as we have migrated to virtual learning. They've established nine tips to ensure academic success in a virtual environment.

1) Retention of previous material is essential to further development of the concepts and success. Never a bad idea to take to review.
 
2) Time is at a premium so it must be used efficiently. 

3) Take notes! Since learning the material is your responsibility, having the information written by your own hand will increase your opportunity to learn and retain the information.

4) You cannot be "taught" everything. Experience working the problems and combining the theory takes time and practice. Therefore, it is essential that you do your work to give you this needed time to process the material.

5) The instructor's job is to provide a solid framework with some particulars to guide the student into learning the concepts and methods which comprise the material of the course. It is NOT to "program" you with isolated facts and problem types that you can simply regurgitate.

6) You must use your resources, materials, apps and so forth to guide you through the class. 

There are two different approaches:
a. Read for the first time the appropriate section(s) of the resources ahead of time. As the material is provided, you can then process and sort the specific content into what you have generally learned. Being prepared for class makes virtual learning more manageable (recommended for most students).

b. Try to pick up what you can from the assignments, notes, readings, etc by absorbing the general idea or through taking notes. Then read through the appropriate section(s) of the assignments to sort through the learned material properly (not recommended for most students as this tends to cause "information overload").

7) Email your teacher for questions and clarifications. Though it may appear you may be "getting it", take advantage of opportunities to get clarifications from your teachers (provided that your question shows that you have been fully engaged in the assignments).

8) Reach out to other students in the class. This will greatly decrease your chances of "learning the material wrong." More importantly, it will give you the opportunity to engage others in the discussion of the material which will help clarify everyone's knowledge. 

9) READ YOUR EMAIL
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