BEST TIPS TO STUDY ONLINE
With the pandemic having taken over the entire world, virtual has become the new normal. Be it work, be it studies, or be it meetings, everything is moving to an online space. With schools and physical coachings closed for the foreseeable future, online learning is inevitable. Although very much convenient, online studying can take a toll on students if not done properly. Be it the ones in school, college or the ones taking up online courses to learn a new skill.
Please keep in mind, that the online classes won’t make the content easy for you, it just makes it convenient for you to take them from the comfort of your home. Here are a few tips to make your online studying more fruitful, efficient and hence, to make your learning more productive.
1. LIMIT YOUR RESOURCES: There is a plethora of content available online, and our human minds have a capacity. Merely studying is not enough, the retention of information is equally important. Hence, you must limit your resources, no matter how tempting it is to click on other videos for the same topic.
For instance, you learnt a lesson on “Introduction to Trigonometry” from a particular YouTube channel. Now, shut your device, open your books and try to solve the problems on your own. If you face a problem, try to find help in the same lesson you watched. If in case, you are unable to find an answer in that particular lesson, only then should you move on to another content.
See, on one particular topic, there will be thousands of lessons online and you cannot possibly go through all of them. It might feel tempting and you might feel terrified thinking, you’d miss out on a certain thing, but that’s not the case. Choose one channel/educator that you like and stick with that, at least for a particular lesson. In case you are unable to attempt questions after studying the complete lesson, then try to search for other alternatives.
This is more appropriate in case you are taking lessons from YouTube or from any other platform that has abundant educators available to choose from. Stick to a few, learn the concepts and apply them yourselves by practising as much as you can.
2. HAVE YOUR PEN AND NOTEBOOKS ALONG WITH YOU: As basic as it may sound, a lot of times, students don’t even bother to take a lesson with their pens and notebooks. Remember, when you understand something and note it down in your own words, the retention becomes much easy and you internalise the information. So next time you take an online lesson, don’t be a passive learner. Be an active one. After all, you are giving your time, energy and money for that lesson right, so why not make it worth it?
3. SEGREGATE YOUR STUDY AND ENTERTAINMENT TIME: Since everything has gone digital in this era, you must separate your studying and entertainment times.
There might be a situation that you are learning a lesson from YouTube, and you see an advertisement for a song, and you start listening to that song. Or you see a video by your favourite creator in the recommended section, and you click on that one. Even you are learning something in an online session organised by your school, you might see a notification and you might be tempted to check that WhatsApp message.
You need to hold yourself accountable, and the best way to do that is to separate your classes and fun time. Look, I understand it’s difficult to not get distracted while studying, but trust me, this tip will help you.
Make a promise to yourself, or rather write down in a notebook that from 9 am to 11 am, you will take lessons and during that time, you won’t click any other thing. In case you are tempted to click on a new video, write the name of that video and tell yourself that you’ll watch it after you are done with your studies.
This way you are programming your mind to focus on the task at hand. After you are done with your studies, take a break and watch the videos you want to. But remember, you need to hold yourself accountable while taking breaks as well. For instance, note down in your notebook, that you will use your phone for entertainment purposes from 11 am to 11:30 am, and not after that.
4. TAKE EFFECTIVE BREAKS: There is a technique called the Pomodoro technique, in which you stay focused on one work for a specific time and then you take breaks. For instance, if you studied for 30 minutes, then take a break for 10 minutes before starting your next session.
Make sure that you take regular breaks after each study session. Also, avoid using phones, social media etc during this break time. Relax your eyes from the screen. Take a walk, lay on your bed for a while, close your eyes for a few minutes, take deep breathes, listen to a song (audio) or talk to your mother, father or anyone in your home or a friend. That will make you feel better and you’ll feel refreshed before starting your new session.
5. REVISE: When you study something for the first time, it will remain fresh in your memory for a few days, but if you don’t revise that lesson, it will eventually fade away. So it is of utmost importance, that you keep revising what you study.
The easiest way to do this is every two weeks, to keep a day fixed for revision. Make it a part of your to-do list that every second Monday, you won’t study anything new, but revise what you read in those two weeks.
For this very reason, it is imperative that you have your written notes at the end of every session, else you will find yourself searching for an hour-long video every time you want to revise a particular concept or lesson. This will ease out your revision process which otherwise can become pretty cumbersome.
6. ANALYSE PREVIOUS YEAR QUESTION PAPERS: Studying a topic and revising that multiple times is a seventy-five per cent job done. You must analyse previous year question papers to make sure you are hundred per cent prepared. It does not matter if you are preparing for board examinations, competitive examinations like IIT-JEE, SAT, CAT, UPSC etc, or you are a college student, previous year questions give you an idea as to what type and what level can you expect in the examination.
It also acts as a mirror and showcases how your preparation is. It forecasts how well can you perform or what improvements are needed for you to sail through the examination.
