Stress-Free Online Training Courses: Breaking It Up

One major plus of online training courses is the flexibility they provide to you, the student. You can learn at home, at the library, or on the road. And with about 300 Municipal Wi-Fi projects in the making around the world, which will provide wireless access to entire cities, the possibilities will be endless.

The flip side of elearning's flexibility is the healthy dose of self-discipline it requires. In order to juggle all the activities in your busy schedule and create a stress-free elearning experience, some planning and strategizing are called for. Here are five tricks you can use.

First, practice distributed learning.

Study skills for online training courses are in many ways like exercising and eating habits. A healthy approach to exercise is to find ways to move your body constantly, rather than remaining stationary all day but at 9 pm squeezing in a trip to the gym. In the same vein, smaller, more frequent meals keep your metabolism stimulated and running smoothly.

When you're studying online course material, a healthy approach is distributed learning, or breaking learning up into small, more frequent study sessions. Just like the metabolism's response to food, the brain is stimulated by smaller installations of information. Your brain likes to recover and recharge between learning. In the periods between online courseware study sessions, the brain rests and digests learning material.

Second, develop a set schedule. This is an essential aspect of managing your time and reserving a chunk of your day for your online courseware. A good, well-planned schedule can help you in all kinds of ways. You'll keep track of your time and feel more satisfied when you've completed the work you need to do. But at its essence, a schedule is meant to save you time.

Having said that, it's important to remember that schedules should be created with the premise that they're flexible. If studying your online training course at 10 pm hasn't been working out after all--you get sleepy and zone out a bit--change the schedule. It's meant to keep you from wandering off course, and if you're doing that anyway while following the schedule, then it's time to revise it. Online training courses, remember, are designed for your busy life, and you're in charge.