Speaker 1: Hello and welcome to the Penguin Prof Channel. This is part of my college success series and today I want to talk about online ed, strategies for success and actually whether or not online ed is right for you. I've spent the last year doing a lot online. I've read everything I could about online ed. I took a lot of courses. I took courses in my own discipline and other disciplines. Some of the courses I paid for, some were MOOCs, those massively open online courses. I did a lot of research and one of the things I spent the most time with was talking to my peers in these classes and I asked a lot of questions. You know, why they were online, whether or not they had found strategies that worked, how many online programs they had taken and I got a ton of information and I just thought it would be really great to share it with you. Things that did not predict the quality of the course was the cost. Some of my best classes were actually free and institutional prestige also did not affect course quality. Some of the most prestigious universities had the worst programs. Things that did affect course quality, number one and two, I mean it really just like a face to face class, the instructor and the students. I find that the students that were very motivated and interested and participated all the time got a lot out of the course and of course those that didn't, didn't. The only thing that was different than face to face class is of course that you're interacting with a website and the quality of the material and the ease of access, those things really did affect course quality a lot. So why students love online ed, I know you can guess a lot of these, number one, answer, control over their schedule. The response I got most often, no more 8 a.m. classes, right? You can take it whenever you want. The number two most popular answer for why students loved online ed was they loved being able to go to class from bed and actually I got this more than I could even believe. They loved not having to shave and shower. I mean who knew that shaving and showering was so exhausting, such a detriment to education, I don't know. But anyway, that was definitely number two. Number three was from caregivers and this is obviously a great reason to take classes online that you can stay home and take care of children or an elderly adult. You save a lot, you can save money by not having to travel and pay for parking, you can save time not having to, you know, hunt for parking places and waiting for class to begin. If you have to travel for work or for pleasure, although I don't think this is really going to help you succeed in online ed, but hey, you know, more power to you if you can. If you have to travel, you can still stay in the class. Some other reasons that I got, some people actually said they were distracted by other students in a traditional classroom. More often than not, I got this, they liked the feeling of one on one and they can progress at their own pace and this I got several times. I wish my professor had a rewind button in real life and I'm taking that to heart, I got to say. I think that's a very good point, that if you're watching a video, of course, you can watch it over and over again until you get it and many, many students really, really liked that. Now here's the problem, right? So far everything sounds so rosy. The problem is that the love that students have for online ed does not impact their success. Online classes in general, I am generalizing, they have terrible problems with retention and overall very high percentages of students drop out or fail to pass the class. And of course, you may be wondering why, you probably have a pretty good idea anyway. You're at home and the distractions at home are endless, okay? When you're sitting in a real classroom, you could be hungry, sleepy, bored, whatever, but you know, there are only certain things that you can do. I mean, you are in class, but if you're at home, oh my gosh, trust me, I know, I had this problem myself. These are the weapons of mass distraction, right? You can procrastinate endlessly at home. Now you have to go into online ed knowing this and knowing that this is going to be a problem, it is biological. The brain values immediate rewards much more than distant rewards. This is called temporal discounting and you can actually graph this, how much you value a reward versus the time until the reward occurs. It looks like this. So even though the distant reward, you know that that degree has great value, your brain actually values that immediate reward of watching the movie or going online and going on Facebook or whatever, your brain values that much, much more. So these immediate rewards far outweigh the distant reward, which may or may not come months or years from now. And who is to blame? Dopamine. It's not your fault. You just need to know this. Dopamine is unbelievably powerful. This is the schematic of dopaminergic pathways in the brain. The important thing to know is that all of these little things that we do and that are so accessible to us all the time, they all give you a little jolt of dopamine and that feels good and your brain wants more. So who cares about tomorrow and the final exam that's months from now, right? That's the point. The truth is, you know, we are animals and all animals are motivated by this sort of triad of reality, pleasure seeking and energy conservation and avoidance of pain. So you can sort of think about your life and think about, you know, where you choose to spend time and the things you struggle getting done. I mean, of course, you know, studying for exams, it's painful. It's not fun. There's nothing fun about it. So you just have to be realistic and know that there are things that you can do to deal with this reality. So the success of students online is highest when the students are self-motivated, when they're interested in the subject, when they like technology and when they're really, really organized. When success was low, when the student was not interested in the subject or had a difficult time making time for the class, was disorganized, here's a big one. Students who don't enjoy reading in general really struggle with online classes because you have to realize there's a lot more reading that you have to do. You're not in a class getting, you know, lectured to or having class activities. You're reading everything. So if you're not a good reader, I really caution you for online classes. Some things that you can do, check out my video for time management. That will help a lot. I'm going to put the link in the down bar below on that one. You've got to separate study time from class time. Online, it feels the same, but it's not. So you have to, I mean, you really are going to spend a lot more time than you think. So if you think that online is great because it takes less time, no, I found it took more time. The Pomodoro technique, Pomodoro means tomato. It's kind of a stupid name, but it came from a tomato timer, whatever, whatever. Set a timer for 25 minutes. Work without interruptions. Give yourself a small break for five minutes, a reward. And then over time, you increase your working period. I do this actually when I have to do things that I really dislike. I really love my job, but I don't like grading. So I do this for grading. There are tons of more high-tech things you can do. I'm not advocating one of these over another. I'm just saying that, you know, you can go online and for your mobile devices or your computer or whatever, there's lots and lots of things. Pick one that you're going to use and use it. You know, don't get so caught up in organizing the perfect schedule, you know. This is something that's worth looking at, Covey's time management matrix. And most everybody you show this to will agree that the priority here is the quadrant that says due soon and important, okay. But where everybody gets a little confused, if I were to ask you to choose what's the next quadrant you should focus on, most people choose this one because it's due soon. And you know what? That's not it. You want to focus on not due soon, but important. That's the quadrant to focus on for long-term goals. The third quadrant is going to be due soon, not important. And the fourth quadrant, not important, not due soon. So another way of looking at this, so this quadrant is urgent. You need to get those things done. Now, for long-term goal achievement, you want to focus on this quadrant, important and not due soon. This is the quadrant to minimize or eliminate or delegate. And this you should just dump. Why is it even on your to-do list, right? It's not important and it's not due soon. So get rid of it. I think it's really important to keep in mind that you need to focus on small steps and tasks and work towards those bigger goals and your overall mission. I do find that the more I focus on small, achievable goals where I can sort of reward myself, you know, for a job well done, give myself that dopamine that my brain needs, I tend to move more towards the mission. I do find that when people focus only on these long-term goals and missions, they're much more easily distracted. So that's something to think about as well. A couple of motivational things here. This is really, really true. You just go one step at a time. You have to start there. The amazing dancer Mikhail Brezhnikov said when he was asked how do you do 12 pirouettes in a row, he said I do them one at a time. I thought that was really helpful. Don't give up what you want most for what you want now. You know, so think of these things, hold them close to your heart when you have those distractions nagging at you, and always, of course, think of those emperor penguins. Getting through the Antarctic winter slow and steady always wins the race. As always, I hope that that was helpful. Thank you so much for visiting the Penguin Prof Channel. Please show your support by clicking those buttons, like, share, and subscribe. Join me on Facebook, follow on Twitter. Good luck.