How college students can make the most of remote learning

7 September, 2020

The zoomers are settling in for another semester of Zoom University.
Most U.S. colleges and universities are offering some form of online instruction this fall semester. In many ways, this is more of the same. In the spring, the forced pivot to remote instruction was a trial by fire for schools. Now, university officials say they�re better prepared to translate coursework online.

�The remote learning that we did in the spring, as an emergency, probably won�t look the same as the remote teaching that we�re doing now,� said Thomas J. Tobin, the director of the Learning Design, Development and Innovation team at University of Wisconsin at Madison.

The Washington Post spoke with six university instructors who have spent the summer helping faculty rearrange classes for the start of the year. Many of them said students should expect more opportunities for �asynchronous learning,� which means students will complete portions of a course on their own time � not during a set Zoom call with the entire class.

�What we do hasn�t actually changed all that much. How we do it has changed and shifted radically,� Tobin said.

As Tobin explains it, asynchronous instruction flips the standard lecture on its head. Jenae Cohn, an academic technology specialist at Stanford University, said students will have a bit more flexibility and agency to decide how they spend their time completing coursework.

�They don�t have to be thinking of classes as the time that their butt is in the chair in the lecture hall,� Cohn said.

When is your favorite time to listen to a lecture?� Cohn asked. �When are you most focused and most engaged?�

Once you create a weekly schedule, stick with it, because Zoom University can otherwise feel all-encompassing. A structured day will help you feel �more in control� over your coursework, Cohn said.

If at all possible, take your classes in a space where someone else is already studying � such as a roommate. It doesn�t matter if that person is taking a different course; you�re both working. The social pressure can keep you on �the task at hand,� said Art Markman, a psychology and marketing professor at the University of Texas at Austin and the head of the school�s academic working group for reopening this semester.


After you�ve settled �when� you work, move on to �where� you work. Find a room, a corner of a room, a desk or another dedicated area where you only study. It helps to have an area separate from other slightly less productive moments on the Internet.