Taking Online or Hybrid courses? This is for you!
Perhaps you want to take an online class, but the skill check indicated it wasn't your best choice.
NMC has several resources for you, including people to help you decide. Check out our resource directory...
How's Your Time?
As you learned in a previous module, time management is one of the most important skills for college success. It is even more important when you are not going to a scheduled class on a regular basis. You have to:
- Manage
your study time. - Complete assignments on your own time.
- Find the time to participate in class activities to prepare for your on-campus meetings if a hybrid course, or for the next activity or assignment if online.
- To be successful, it requires a lot of self-discipline!
Our online and hybrid courses represent the same model as the same course on campus. They typically:
- Use the course outline.
- Use the same textbook(s).
- Meet the same list of learning objectives.
- Have the same grading scales.
They just meet in fully or partially in a different classroom...the virtual classroom.
It is an online course misconception that an online course will take less time.
This is not true. However, you do have more control over when you spend that time on the course. Let's explain it this way:
With an online course, you may take a 4-credit course, however, instead of the 4 hours of classroom and travel time in one evening, you spend an hour on Sunday, fifteen minutes on Monday, two hours on Tuesday, etc. Your "class time" is spent accessing online documents, checking announcements, submitting assignments, posting discussions, emailing your instructor, etc. Add on your needed "out-of-classroom" study time (2 additional hours for each credit hour), and the time is the same as if taking this same course face-to-face. In fact, often, students state it takes a little more time due to having to read content instead of listening to a lecture.