How to be Successful in a Self-Paced Course

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By Tracey Brown, Teacher Specialist, Office of Instructional Technology

Over the last fews years teacher obligations seem to have increased more and more. In an effort to continue to provide excellent professional development to all instructional staff, we have increasingly moved offerings into a self-paced format in an effort to allow just-in-time learning that fits anyone’s busy schedule.

We know not everyone learns well in a self-paced format, and that is why we continue to offer live sessions at schools throughout the day and during faculty meetings, and to offer them in the evenings in a remote format with the hopes of returning to in-person soon, but there are steps you can take to make a self-paced course work better for any learner.

Chunk it

When schedules get busy, we sometimes adopt the mindset, “I just need to get this done so I can move on to the next task.” Working through a self-paced course with the sole goal of getting it done is a recipe for frustration. If a course is advertised as being 5 hours of content, do not try to digest it in one 5-hour sitting. Rather than focusing on the total hours, focus on how many modules or sessions are presented and think of each as one sitting. If the course is 6 modules, for example, you will sit down a total of six times to complete one module at a time. The first module might only take you 20 minutes, while the second is 50, but the content is grouped into that module in a way that is meaningful; it is all relevant to the same or similar topics and the knowledge should build throughout.

Practice

Whatever the content is, take time to practice the skills in between each module/session. This means that you will actually spend longer in a course than the amount of time advertised in the course description. How much time is entirely subjective to each learner, but it is necessary to ensure success with the content. Imagine trying to learn a new sport without practicing. For a select few with natural talent, they may be successful with this approach, but for the majority of us, “practice makes perfect.”

Let Interest Guide You

If the topic doesn’t interest you, and doesn’t solve a problem that you have right now, this might not be the course for you. I know this can be hard when we need credits to fulfill licensing obligations or we are encouraged to use tools from our leadership team, but you have to psych yourself up for the content before you dive in, or you will only be focused on getting it done and the pace and content will frustrate you throughout that course and you will finish feeling like you learned nothing.

Set Goals and Reflect

Whether you chose the course or you were “voluntold” to take it, set one to three goals before beginning the content. This can help lead you to the interest aspect, especially if you didn’t get the first choice of the course you wanted to take. Setting goals can ensure that your interests are aligned with the course description and content and help you focus on how you can apply it when finished. Reflecting on those goals can help you determine if you got out of the course what you had hoped and if not, what could you do next to work towards that goal? Was this the wrong course, or worse, was it poorly designed? As hard as it is for an instructional designer to hear, this is important feedback to getting better quality courses out there in any format.

Interested in self-paced courses OIT has to offer?

See the Fall Offerings flyer and scroll down to Self-Paced

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