1.   Have an open mind and a welcoming heart

• • Open your minds and hearts to new perspectives and ways of learning and understanding. 

  • Don’t be afraid of change.  Push yourself to explore ideas and skills beyond your comfort zones. 

  • Complain less, do more. 

  • Do not resist the learning experience and embrace the task given to you.  Without openness and optimism, learning will not flourish. 

  • Take on a positive attitude toward difficulties and feedback.  Use these to make yourself better rather than point fingers and be dejected.  Remember that criticisms are meant to make you realize your weaknesses so that you may learn and be able to address them.  As adults, we should take a more proactive and productive viewpoint on critiques and challenges.

2. Be responsible for your own learning

• • Reflect and self-assess. Examine your work and performance.  Evaluate your assumptions, beliefs, and ways of doing things.

  • Develop your study strategies and habits that work for you. 

  • Use the rubric given to you in your requirement guides to be aware of the criteria and standards that you should meet.

  • Take initiative and be a problem-solver.

3. Plan your study

• • Time management is one of the important skills that individuals have to develop in order to get all their work done.  Creating a study plan can help you schedule and put a timeline for your different tasks, and avoid procrastination.

  • With all the responsibilities that you have to juggle, it is necessary that you learn to conserve time, energy, and resources. Think with the end in mind. Knowing the requirements that you need to complete in each module, in the course, and in your program, think of how you could use the concepts and principles that you are studying to accomplish all the requirements of the courses and the program that you will eventually have to complete. For example, you may also use data that you have gathered or connections you have established from doing your previous assignments to complete succeeding requirements in a course. Another would be determining how you could do multiple requirements or tasks in different courses in one study site. These are just some of the ways you could plan and strategize your learning and academic work. 

4.  Be diligent in doing research.

Search other resources that will enable you to learn better and expand and deepen your understanding more.  Apply your skills in evaluating Web resources to know if the resources are credible and appropriate to your needs.

• • Evaluating Sources [1]

  • Evaluating Internet Resources [2]

The availability and accessibility of information on the internet can make it difficult to determine which sources are relevant and reliable. The links above present a criteria on evaluating web resources that may prove useful for you.

5.  Participate and be involved

We learn more and develop deeper understanding of concepts when we participate in collaborative learning activities. Thus, be active in forum discussions and take part in collaborative activities. It is natural to be hesitant and daunted at first. However, don’t let fear hinder you from express your mind and render you as a passive recipient of other people’s ideas. Your opinion and contribution matter.

6.  Use your own words

Even though knowledge is a social product, it is important that you acknowledge sources and use our own words when discussing or writing your papers and outputs.  Practice proper way of paraphrasing.  

Take part in preserving and upholding honesty and integrity in your classes.  

• • You may provide assistance to classmates who have forgotten to cite their references or to include proper in-text citations, or call their attention if they have inadvertently committed plagiarism.  

  • You may also inform your Faculty-in-Charge (FIC) if you have noticed blatant plagiarism in the work of your peers, so that they can be corrected for their mistakes.

If you know you have committed plagiarism or have omitted proper citations, please take the initiative of correcting yourself by editing or revising your work (previous or current).

Please note that outputs with plagiarized content will not be accepted and should be revised.  Otherwise, you may be marked 5.00 (Failed) or reported to the appropriate authorities of the University.

7.  Take down notes, summarize, and use advance organizers.

• • To be able to handle the amount of resources and information that you will encounter in your courses, you need to practice effective note taking.  This need not be handwritten.  You can utilize digital technologies to take down notes.  

  • While taking notes, you should be able to synthesize what the resources are conveying and take note of salient information.  Combine and interconnect the learning that you will gain from the rich discussions that you will have with your classmates, from the course activities and tasks, and from the module resources and personal readings.

  • To organize information and ideas better, make use of concept maps, diagrams, and tables.  In answering the questions in forums, it is strongly recommended that you use advance organizers.  This will help you organize the concepts that you have learned, while also allow your peers to understand your response better.

8.  Read the assignment/requirement guides carefully, completely, and ahead of time.  Accomplish your requirements promptly   

Assignments and other course requirements are given to enable you to process and apply your knowledge concretely, which can result to better learning and deeper understanding.  This will also help measure your achievement of the course’s objectives. Hence, you are encouraged to view academic requirements as tools for learning and not as burdens. 

• • Read the guides and instructions as soon as you receive them, so you could immediately start planning and preparing for your assignments and requirements.

  • Do your assignments as soon as possible to get them out of the way.  This will give you enough time to breathe and prepare for the next module or assignment, and will enable you to avoid requirements from piling up on you.  

9. Answer the Study Questions

Although the answers to the study questions are not usually checked, you should answer them as they will help you understand the resources better that will in turn enable you to successfully do the module tasks and contribute substantially in the discussion forums.

10. Persevere and maintain a positive attitude.

Continue learning and working hard.  Even if you are faced with a road block, do not waver.  Enjoy your experiences as you go through the entire process of learning no matter how hard it may be.  Plough through your obstacles and keep moving forward; before you know it, you are already at the end of the journey. Don’t give up. You can do it. 

 Online Resource:

Planning My Learning [3]

Planning a fit and appropriate learning plan is essential for you as this can significantly contribute to the success of your online education journey. You will find in the article a list of tips on how to develop your own learning plan, whether through assessing your own skills and abilities using Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) technique or setting Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Traceable (SMART) goals. You can also explore other tabs in the website to learn about Study Methods on the Web.