Students need better orientation in order to succeed in online classes

Online courses have become a large marketing tool for colleges to attract potential students. Online courses are marketed as a convenient time saver and a good tool for those too busy to spend several days a week on campus.
Unfortunately, not all students naturally possess the specific skill set needed to exceed in these classes.

Every term, unprepared students fail these courses and wonder what they could have done different. Wouldn’t it be nice if they could have heard how to do better before having to regret a blemish on their transcript?
Taking an online course may seem like a miraculous solution to a hectic schedule, but students should be educated on the needed discipline and devoted spare time distance learning requires.

Average community college students have demanding home lives. Between working, homework and sometimes parenting, fewer hours spent on campus can be alluring. Taking online courses lessens the time required to spend away from home, but there are several components that can become obstacles to earning a passing grade.

Who is available to tell students they should be able to budget their time and have the discipline to maintain their schedules before registering for one of these courses? Instructors do provide an average number of hours that a student can expect to spend on coursework throughout the week, but students need to have already registered for a course to find this out. Also, how can instructors know their students even read the syllabus?

On Black Board, the website used for online coursework, you must indicate that you’ve read the syllabus in order to move onto lessons. Unfortunately, it is very easy to have waited until the last minute to complete a lesson and simply scroll through all the information and mark reviewed without reading any of the course requirements. Some instructors do give out syllabus quizzes as a tool to make sure students are aware of their responsibilities, but not all instructors do.

Advisers play a role in conveying the discipline needed for online courses, but not all students go to academic advising before registering for classes.
Whether a student has a computer and Internet access at home is one of the bigger components that should be considered before registering for online courses. If this isn’t considered, students may be unprepared to spend hours in the school library or computer lab finishing homework and can easily fall too far behind to recover.

Having spent three terms adjusting to the demand of online work, I would like to see a better process implemented by MHCC. Not only would this help students but it would also help the college. Better grades would mean higher completion rates, which in the long run would mean more state funding.
Online class orientations should be made mandatory to students who wish to take distance-learning courses rather than those held on campus. Required orientations could be in the form of student success seminars, or they could be offered by the instructors of specific courses themselves. An option for students outside of the metropolitan area could be offered online in the form of podcasts for convenience.

If one student wishes there had been someone to sit down and show them the ropes of online courses, there’s a pretty good chance there are other overwhelmed students out there who wish the same. Luckily for MHCC, the benefits are mutual. An innovative process making stellar grades more attainable for busy students may be a claim to fame big enough to boost enrollment.