Profile of a Successful Student

Instructors with years of online teaching experience agree that students who have a successful, satisfying experience learning online share several critical characteristics:

• Good Time Management: Can your child create and maintain a study schedule throughout the Online Instruction Days? You can help them by working with them to create a schedule based upon their school’s posted schedule. Help them block out their time and plan for success.

• Effective Communication: Can your child ask for help, make contact with other students and the instructor online, and describe any problems she/he has with learning materials using email, texting and/or the telephone? Help your child by giving them the words they may need to ask the questions that are troubling them. Teach them to not be shy about asking for help when they don’t understand something. Without a teacher next to them or accessible by raising their hands, they may need you to help them ask the right question.

• Independent Study Habits: Can your child study and complete assignments without direct supervision and maintain the self-discipline to stick to a schedule? This is not an easy skill to develop, but it can be grown over time. Again, time limits may help you here when working with your child. Set time goals for students to remain focused on a specific task. As they reach those goals, extend the time slowly over time.

• Self-Motivation: Does your child have a strong desire to learn skills, acquire knowledge and fulfill assignments in online courses because of an educational goal? Can she/he maintain focus on that goal? One of the benefits of online learning is that it can open doors to new possibilities for students to explore.

• Academic Readiness: Does your student have the basic reading, writing, math and computer literacy skills to succeed in the class? As we move into these Online Learning Days, check in with your child’s teacher and your child to see if the work they are doing is at a level they are prepared for; monitor frustration levels with the work that is being done. If you need to, work with your child’s teacher to modify the assignments to ease frustration.