5 Ways to Improve Your Concentration When Taking Nursing Online Courses

Have you ever experienced attending an online lecture for an hour, and remember or understand nothing? Well, you’re not alone. Some of us may encounter that kind of scenario because we lack concentration during online courses, webinars, or lectures.  Concentration is something that we need to digest the things that we’re hearing or watching. It’s just not simply staring or listening.

When the pandemic came, everything went online. Shopping, consultations, and even schools are virtual. Universities offered online courses and programs to students for them to continue their learning. Let’s admit it, studying online is not easy at all. It is a lot different from the regular school setup that we’re used to. 

But how can we overcome this? How can we improve our concentration to get the best out of our online courses? Let’s talk about some ways to improve our concentration, especially when taking online courses!

  1. Prepare Yourself

In a traditional school setup scenario, before we go to school, we prepare the things we need in schools like books, ball pens, notes, and other things. We wake up early, dress properly, and travel before school time. This is a bit different from how we attend our online courses. We wake up, open our computers, and that’s it, we have entered the classroom. Easy right? But it affects our concentration.

As we wake up and prepare ourselves for our regular classes, we also set our minds up. We build our thinking that we’re going to study, and it boosts our concentration. On the other hand, preparing for online classes doesn’t require that. Some of us might get up five minutes before the actual classes and just sit down in front of the computer.

So what can we do? Attend online classes like how we attend our regular schools. Set the things we need for the subject, take a bath, and dress appropriately, not in your pajamas. As said earlier, preparation can establish your focus for your online courses, and in that way, we can concentrate longer. Also, if you are interested in studying abroad, consider these cheap universities in Canada for prospective students. 

  1. Eliminate Distractions

Distractions are anything that can interfere with your tasks. In attending online classes, you might encounter many distractions, and when your attention is diverted into something else, you lose focus. So, what should you do?

Eliminate distractions. Easy to say, right? Remember, your main goal is to get rid of what may get your time from taking online courses. Usually, it begins like this: you see something, and you open them until you lose track of your main activity. You can start eliminating distractions by knowing what distracts you. Is your Netflix, Instagram, or video games interrupt you? Are your pets, friends, or television distract you? Knowing the things that might interrupt you is helpful because you know what to remove.

The second thing to do is to make a plan on how to remove them during online courses. If the reason is your phone, put it away while you’re in an online class. If the reason is the people around you, go to an empty room and study alone. Eliminating distractions increase the chances of being more concentrated while taking online courses.

  1. Participate

Like in traditional classes, participation is needed not only for your grades but also for your concentration.  When you participate in a lecture, you are involved with it because you’re thinking about the same topic. Engaging with your group improves concentration because you’re reducing the possibility that your mind would be distracted by other things. 

Actively participating in an online course means sharing thoughts on the discussion, asking questions to your professor, and simply agreeing to the lesson. You just don’t listen, but you get involved with your class. By doing these things, you’ll understand the lecture better, and it will help your brain process and digest complicated lessons quickly. 

  1. Take a Break

One thing that may cause short attention and concentration span is that we feel that our course and lectures are forever. Have you ever take a one-hour online class but ended up finishing for five hours because you were distracted by simple things? Most of us experience that because we feel our classes are boring, and we ended up browsing social media to refresh our minds, but the reality is it took away our time for studying. So, what should we do?

Take a break from your online classes. Why? Because according to researches, the longest attention span that adults can have for a task is 20 minutes. So, to concentrate again, we need to re-focus. Having a break can refresh your mind and think of it as a reward for yourself. You can give yourself a break after finishing a 20-minute lecture or one chapter in your book. If you’re attending synchronous classes, they usually offer breaks.

What should you do on breaks? You can take a walk outside a room, drink water or eat snacks. You don’t open your Netflix and finish an episode or take a nap. Remember, your goal is to refresh your concentration, so do not divert your mind to other activities that will surely lessen your attention to your course.

  1. Create and Follow a Schedule

What time do you study? What lessons should you take first? Creating a schedule will help you organize the tasks you should do, and by following it, you give your mind divisions of what to think and concentration per task follows. If you don’t have a schedule, the activities are scattered in your brain, increasing your chances of procrastinating.

Kindly create a realistic schedule. Something that you can really do, and if you want to take a break per class, indicate them in your written schedule. Seeing your schedule will help you prioritize the important things, saving a lot of your time. 

Creating a schedule is pretty easy rather than following it. But, here’s an easy tip: Post your schedule in your study area. If you always see your schedule, you’ll memorize them, and eventually, it will turn into a routine. These routines will greatly impact your concentration as it prepares your mind to be organized and disciplined.