4 Tips For Online Learning

In March 2020, universities closed down and transitioned to an online learning format. Students face many issues with online learning, such as improper time management, constant distractions, and limited social interactions. In this blog post I will share 4 tips that help me through online learning.

Organize a Calendar

A calendar can be conveniently used to organize all your weekly activities and keep you up to track. I am currently in my second year taking 4 courses, and I work 19 hours a week. I use the calendar to plan my week, I even include activities such as going to office hours, going to the gym, and meeting with friends to make sure I don’t forget those.

I use the MacBook default calendar app, and I have 4 calendars set up for: Courses, TAing, Private tutoring, and Personal stuff. I also include important events for the day in the top. Here is a screenshot of how it looks like:

Attend all Lectures

Lectures are extremely important. Last summer, I took MAT344 (combinatorics). One day, my employer asked me if I’m able to run a lesson during the time of the lecture. I thought “sure, the lecture is recorded anyway. I will just catch up later.” At the start, I was able to keep up with the recordings. However, this backfired in the second part of the summer and I fell behind. With the online format, I find lectures more useful than before. I can easily ask my questions in the chat and the prof promptly answers. Also I also get to connect with other students by talking through the direct messaging feature.

Use Zoom to Simulate Study Room

Zoom can help study together with friends as a study room simulator. In the zoom study room, all participants unmute their mic, and we spend time working through problems together. We also ask each other questions and share content, similar to how we would in an actual study room. If you register with a UofT account, you should be able to get free premium zoom account features.

Block anything that’s unrelated

Blocking extensions and apps can help avoid distractions and stay more concentrated on tasks. When I finished my CSC148 deferred exam, I suddenly had lots of time to waste. The block strategy helped me stay more focused. The idea is: as a CS student, any blocking app or extension I add to my computer is very easy to disable. To counteract this, I installed a lot of blocking extensions. In addition, I modified the Mac host file to block the sites I am distracted on. Now, to unblock a site, I need to disable a series of extensions, change the host file, change the date & time in my computer to trick SelfControl…

With these extensions, I procrastinate to start procrastinating. There is so much work that needs to be done!

For reference, here is how my extensions tab looks like: