Online Nursing Degree Success Strategies
Why Get A Nursing Degree Online?
The great thing about online classes is you can do them anytime, anywhere, and there’s never a commute or parking problem. The flexibility, access, and convenience are unmatched, which is why record numbers of nursing students are choosing an online experience (at least in their classroom studies) than a more traditional form of nursing schooling.
But there are several steps you should follow in any online endeavor to ensure that you will be a success and that your degree will translate into a well-paying job and a good placement.
What’s the First Step?
The first step is to commit.
This commitment means to look over both the course outline and the study requirements, understand them thoroughly, and then make sure you inflate their time requirements. If the syllabus says the project, reading, or study mode will take ten hours, set aside fifteen; after all, in dealing with the internet, you are primarily going to be learning visually, and that method, for some, may take some getting used to.
More importantly, make sure that the entire timeline of the course is something you can commit to. If you reason out that the studying, done up to speed and in a timely manner, will take you 30 hours a week that you do not have, you will either need to abandon the course or free up more time somewhere.
Beyond the time commitment, however, be sure the mental and emotional commitment is there also. You’re making a big change in your life; make sure you’re married to it.
Commit as well to the assessment schedule. The assessments are the benchmarks to let the instructor know how well you are doing in completing the course, and they must be as well-reasoned, correct, and as timely as you can make them. A late test, missing answers, or a plethora of misinformation proclaims your disinterest, and lack of study, in the course. And be sensible about the study committee. Do you have a ten-question quiz? Take a few study hours. A two hundred question quiz? Take a study week.
The Second Step
This brings us to the second step, to plan. Plan regular hours every week to study; plan regular sessions with friends in the course, either in person or in online conferences, to group study. And for heaven’s sake, do this planning, and the studying, when you’re mentally alert, not at midnight on Saturday just after the club.
You should also plan a place to study, a little patch of privacy where you know where everything is, and study comes easily to you. And if family, the boyfriend, buddies, or the landlord keep dropping by, find a bookstore, library, or quiet coffee shop, and maybe add a latte to your study regime. There’s more than one kind of commitment.
The Third Step
The third step is to participate. Ask questions when the class is meeting; volunteer information if you know something; make a class-wide query if you don’t. Ask to join one of the study chat rooms (there’s bound to be at least three or more of these in the class, and one of them at least should welcome you), and participate there. One of the great things about online chat is that people are sometimes much more relaxed, and freer with their knowledge and expertise than they are in person.
This also helps you keep focus. If you’re involved with a particular online group, and you meet regularly Tuesday and Thursday nights to study JUST for the RN, that’s all to the good—it will keep you from spending those evenings finding fun electives or wild online stuff that just might distract you from your studies. If you’re expected somewhere to study online, you’ll be there, not taking an online ceramics class or leveling up on World of Warcraft.
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A Final Warning
Your internet and your computer will be your world for hours at a time. For heaven’s sake, keep all your classroom materials on a zip drive, just in case the worst should happen and your computer crashes before the big test.
And maybe you can take a few minutes every so often to leave the computer and go outside. We hear the graphics are amazing out there.
Now that you know the online nursing degree success strategies, you therefore can rely more on yourself than on luck.