Many students new to online learning may find it difficult to adjust to the unfamiliar working environment, especially if the programme of study relies on a certain amount of self-direction. A key factor is in helping students feel they are progressing and achieving their goals so they don’t become despondent.  It is also important to provide a framework to assist them with online information management and their own time management. Students may find it difficult setting and maintaining work schedules.  Providing assistance during preparation and throughout the course can help students manage their online workload.

This guide will explore ways to help students through:

• Providing a study guide and templates
  
• Providing structure through deadlines
  
• The timing and nature of feedback
  
• Achieving a balance through course design

Preparation

Study Guide
One way to help students understand how best to work in an online environment is to give them some guidelines on effective studying. This could be in the form of a shared document or study guide and can include helpful information on:

• How to manage their study time. Students may be unfamiliar with self-directed learning and may need guidance in planning their work schedule and understanding the need to allocate regular study times.
  
• How to keep good records of their work and progress. This can include tips on effective information management such as how to keep checklists of progress, how to allocate computer space for filing work and suggestions for good organisation.
  
• Keeping a back-up copy of all their work. This saves time and anguish if work is ever lost through negligence, computer problems or viruses.
  
• Having up-to-date virus protection. It helps to understand the importance of this if students are working on their own computers. Students can also be provided with general guidelines for avoiding virus damage through the careful handling of email and attachments.
  
• Having a quiet place to study. This helps students avoid distractions whilst working and allows them to concentrate on their work.
  
• Maximising off-line study. Studying off-line can help with efficiency by eliminating the delays created when accessing web information and by slow download speeds. Emphasis can also be placed on the psychological and health benefits of working off computer where possible.
  
• Letting the teacher know of any problems. If students communicate promptly with their teacher when they encounter doubts or problems, this allows the teacher to intervene more effectively and to find suitable alternatives.

Templates
The teacher or course developer can also minimise the work a student has to do by providing templates to help them with document construction and information management. Some examples of useful templates could be:

• A portfolio template. If a portfolio needs to be submitted for summative assessment, a document can be provided with allocated spaces for relevant work and students can be encouraged to construct the portfolio as they progress through the course. The teacher can also provide feedback on draft copies to help students resolve problems early on.
  
• Progress checklists. This can take many forms and can be for students to track their own progress or could be a document to be shared regularly with the teacher. These can be created in word processing applications or as spreadsheets for more complex checklists.
  
• Examples of activities. These can help illustrate what is required and can highlight any specific areas that students should consider.

Structure through deadlines

Students can find it difficult to feel oriented in the online work environment as familiar visual cues such as allocated work time and space, printed guides and resources and teacher presence are missing. Structure can be provided for them through course design and a clear work schedule to help them understand their place and chart their progress within the course. Ways to facilitate this are to:

• Have clear deadlines and a schedule for completion of work. These can be made known to students early on so they can plan their work. Regular key deadlines, say at the end of each unit or module, can help students stay on track and even more frequent suggested deadlines, say for each task or activity, can help individual students pace their work.
  
• Send reminders of deadlines. Students can be reminded of major deadlines by email to ensure they stay on track and understand the need to work consistently. This can also allow students to voice any difficulties they are having before the deadline has passed.
  
• Negotiate revised deadlines if needed. Within reason, this can encourage students to take responsibility for their progress and can allow some flexibility.
  
• Have synchronisation points. If students are working collaboratively, regular synchronisation points where they all must reach the same stage can help them stay in step with each other. These could coincide with major deadlines or be spaced regularly throughout a programme.

Teacher interaction and feedback

How the teacher interacts and responds to students can also have an impact on how well students can manage their workload. Different ways to help students include:

• Regular monitoring of progress.  If the teacher remains aware of each student’s progress, it is easier to recognise and intervene when a student is falling behind or having difficulties. Teachers can keep a record of student progress and consistent participation can be encouraged through course design to help students maintain momentum.
  
• Giving prompt responses. A quick response to a student’s contribution or message shows the student that his or her efforts are being recognised and allows the student to receive feedback whilst their ideas are still fresh. This then allows students to complete work definitively and to move forward.
  
• Giving clear feedback. To avoid ambiguity, the teacher can communicate clearly whether a student’s work is satisfactory or not and whether any additional work needs to be done. This again allows students to complete work and to move forward.
  
• Providing incentives for completion of work. These could include:
  
  • Positive feedback on their progress
    
  • Access to additional fun and educational games and activities
    
  • Freeware (free software)
    
  • Increased autonomy in planning their own work schedule or topic choices
• Encouraging students to voice fears and problems. This can be facilitated throughout the course by the online relationship that the teacher builds with students and can be encouraged through private, supportive emails if the teacher feels that a student may be encountering difficulties.

Course design and workload

Course design can have a significant impact on how easy it is for students to manage their workload and consideration needs to be given to achieving a balance throughout a programme. Some issues to consider are:

• ‘Chunking’. Students can often cope with online information more easily if it is broken up into manageable ‘chunks’. This applies to web based information such as the density of text in reading resources and can also apply to course structure. Having discrete modules or units allows students to visualise their progress more easily and can give them a sense of satisfaction at the completion of each section. This technique can work with deadlines as a way to help students stay on track.
• Keep a balance between group and individual tasks. Group based activities such as discussions, collaborative projects or paired activities will often take considerably more time than individual tasks as students have to fit in with the work schedules of others. This is particularly true if communication is asynchronous (not in real time) as delays in responses can spread a discussion out over days, even weeks. Ensuring you have a reasonable balance between task types and enough time between group based tasks can help students manage their workload.
  
• Understand what the workload actually is. You may be underestimating how much time students will be spending reading resources, communicating with each other and completing activities. This can be especially true if a course has been converted from traditional face-to-face to online delivery as the latter often requires a lot of active learning and doesn’t accommodate the same level of passive learning, such as listening, that face-to-face does. If in doubt, study the course yourself.
  
• Plan for work that can be done offline. Work done whilst online can often be more time consuming due to time delays in accessing web pages, differences in download speeds, the difficulty of reading text on a computer and the general unreliability of online technology. You can help students work off-line by having course materials and reading resources that can be easily downloaded or printed and by using asynchronous communication.
  
• Use reliable technology. The reliability of online technology can never be guaranteed but you can help students by hosting your own resources (course materials, communication areas, reading material), by aiming to fix technical problems promptly, by using ‘low-tech’ facilities and by having back-up options of all key course areas if there is ever a major failure.

There is no one solution to helping all students manage their workloads, regardless of the delivery method, but it is possible to recognise the specific difficulties the online environment might create for students and to combat this, to a certain extent, through course design, preparation and interaction. Not all students will necessarily respond but it will work toward creating the best possible learning environment for them and give them some tools to help them manage their own progress more effectively.