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This version was saved 10 years, 2 months ago View current version     Page history
Saved by Laura Gibbs
on January 3, 2014 at 4:58:28 pm
 

 

Time Management: Choosing Your Work Plan

 

Time management is the single biggest challenge that online students face. Technology is not a problem; technology, in fact, is easy... but time management is hard. You will be doing 6-8 hours of work per week for this class every week. It is a very steady workload, no midterms, no finals - but you do have to find 6-8 hours for this class each week, every week. Moreover, unlike other classes, you don't have a regularly scheduled meeting time for this online class, which makes it very tempting to put things off until the last minute. NOT GOOD. Believe me: if you put things off until the last minute, this class will become extremely stressful. But here's the good news: you can avoid all that stress by creating your own class meeting times.

 

To get started in making your plan, take a look at a typical work week for the class that you are in (every week has the same type of assignments):

 

 

As you can see, there are assignments due on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday (or over the weekend, based on what is best for you; see below). So, based on the assignments due each week, you need to think about what will be the best way for you to manage your class time: 

 

WEEK AHEAD PLAN. With the Week Ahead Plan, all your deadline worries are over! It's no extra work to get one week ahead; it's just a matter of buckling down for a few days and doing enough work to get ahead. Then you can stay ahead for the whole rest of the semester, working one week at a time — but one week ahead of the schedule. While the rest of the class is doing the Week 2 assignments, for example, you will already be on Week 3, and so on. Once you get that one week ahead, it's easy to stay ahead for the rest of the semester.

Extra credit! This plan allows you to get two points of "early bird extra credit" every week - one point for being ahead on the reading/blogging assignments (Tuesday-Thursday) and one point for being ahead on your Storybook assignment (Friday/weekend). That's a great cushion of extra credit to have for any assignments you do have to skip because you are busy with work in your other classes, etc.

 

WEEKEND PLAN. For many people, doing online course work is easiest over the weekend. If you choose the Weekend Plan, you can do ALL the work over the weekend, with no work due Monday-Friday. Here's how that works for Week 2 for example:

Week 2 Weekend: do the Week 2 Friday/weekend assignments AND do the Tuesday-Thursday assignments for Week 3.

Extra credit!  Since you are working ahead for the Tuesday-Thursday assignments, that means you can take one point of "early bird extra credit" every week for being ahead on the reading/blogging assignments.

 

WEEKDAY PLAN. Some people have other commitments over the weekend - work, family, etc. - and you may want to not have schoolwork to do over the weekend (that's my approach; I do my work for school Monday-Friday, with the weekend for family). So, you can definitely opt to do the work for this class during the week without having to do any work over the weekend. If you are going to do the Weekday Plan, I would urge you to work at least one day ahead of each deadline. That will reduce the stress and give you a little room to maneuver if anything unexpected comes up. There are no assignments due on Monday, so on Monday you can do the Tuesday assignments, on Tuesday do the Wednesday assignments, on Wednesday do the Thursday assignments, and then on Thursday you can start the Friday assignments; if you don't finish on Thursday, you can finish up on Friday. That way you are all done before the weekend arrives!

 

I hope this overview was helpful in thinking about what your time management strategy will be for this class. You'll probably want to take a look at this page again later in the week and then again next week after you get a better sense of just what the class assignments are like.

 

For now, after you have read this page, you can complete the Gradebook Declaration. Then, in the spirit of working ahead, I hope you will go ahead and complete the Wednesday assignments now, instead of waiting until Wednesday! :-)

 

 

PLEASE READ CAREFULLY:

I understand that this course requires 6-8 hours of work every week. I also understand that I can work ahead and that it is my responsibility to choose a time management strategy that will allow me to complete all the required work before the deadlines.

 

 

(source: Proverb Posters)

 

 

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