Friday, February 2, 2001

LOGGING IN WITH . . . Sara Dulaney Gilbert Time-Management Skills Are One Key to Success for Online Students By JEFFREY R. YOUNG Honing your time-management skills and taking course work seriously are keys to making the grade as an online student, says Sara Dulaney Gilbert in her new book, How to Be a Successful Online Student (McGraw-Hill). Ms. Gilbert -- an author and publicist who has written more than 25 books on education or self-help topics -- surveyed online students and teachers, sat in on several online courses, and interviewed online-course providers to compile the book, which is full of checklists, anecdotes, and tips for students interested in entering an electronic classroom. She has also worked in public relations at New York University and at Anne Arundel Community College. Q. One of the messages of your book seems to be that distance education is harder than students might think. Why do you stress that? A. I think students go into it with the mindset that this is going to be a lot simpler. They go into it thinking, Piece of cake, I can get a degree in my pajamas. And when reality strikes, it can be shocking. It's an attitude that, to a certain extent, the providers have sold us -- that, gee whiz, you can have your family, you can have your job, you can have everything you want, and you can get a degree. One thing that I talk about is that you should find out if you like it first by going into one of the more recreational types of online courses and see how you manage it. Q. From a student's perspective, what is the biggest difference between online courses and traditional courses? A. Probably time management is one of the more difficult ones. ... If you're signed on to a bricks-and-mortar class, and it's at 2:10 to 4 p.m. and you don't show up for most of those sessions, you're not going to do very well. But you know that that's the time you have to be there. Online, there's no teacher taking roll. ... You've got to be prepared to be organized, and you've got to keep up with the work. Q. Can you give any other quick tips for success as an online student? A. Communicate with the teacher in the class. If there are chat sessions, participate in them. Let the teacher get to know who you are. You can do apple-polishing from a distance -- just like you might try to charm your teacher in class. If you can, get in touch with the teacher in the beginning just to clarify something you didn't understand, or just make some kind of personal contact. Since they never see you, it's even more important that the teachers get to know who you are. And if you're having any kind of a problem, you've got to get on top of it very quickly -- whether it's a technical problem or a problem with understanding the material. Q. What about teaching? What would you say makes a good online teacher? A. A lot of teachers had the idea that this was going to be easier than teaching in a regular class. Of course, what most of them have found is that ... it's a lot of work to prepare and not everybody is suited to do it. A good classroom teacher is one who wants to get to know the students -- who pays good attention to what they're saying and pays good attention to the people who aren't saying anything. Those are qualities that will help you be a good online teacher, and it may be even more important to pay that kind of attention online. Because you can't see the people, you don't know who's in the back row reading a comic book. You have to sort of be aware of, Wait a minute, there's 10 people on the roster, and I'm only getting talk from eight of them. Q. You say in the book that students shouldn't assume that a well-known traditional university will offer the best online courses. A. Absolutely. Don't look for a name you've necessarily heard of. Some of the schools that made the biggest splash in online stuff are really big business, and as far as I'm concerned, it's not education. ... I think some of the bigger names have just a tiny touch of arrogance. I was really interested in some of the smaller ones. A lot of the community colleges have some very good programs, because they have some experience with distance stuff before the Internet got started. Q. Have you taken an online course yourself? A. No. I don't think I'd be very good at it. ... I probably demand too much attention. I'm not sure I'd be satisfied sitting behind a screen. Q. Do you think this explosion of online courses is a positive thing? A. It's going to be a good thing, I think, because it's going to force institutions of all kinds to focus on the student more than they're accustomed to having to do, and it's going to force institutions to collaborate in ways they've never had to before. Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

U. of California reports hiring a smaller proportion of women since passage of Prop. 209 Sen. Specter will remain head of appropriations panel on education and health Women's Studies Association accused of providing inadequate child care at annual meeting British medical schools urged to take student cheating more seriously Updates on billion-dollar campaigns at 18 universities Engineering prizes go to pioneers of the Internet and the pacemaker Scholars rally to online magazine's defense over publishing software code Time-management skills are one key to success for online students