Learning in the Online Course Portal & Research

Being a student in the online classroom is often convenient for the adult learner, as not having to attend class in the brick and mortal classroom leaves more time to balance home, work, and family too.  A challenge that I find many nontraditional students have less trouble with getting back into the swing of the classroom, and more trouble with understanding the classroom environment - that is, the online course portal.

Often times there are technical support services available through your college or university library and/or technical/IS staff.  You can usually determine who your support team will be early on in the course (or even before it begins) by logging on to the course portal and looking for the 'help' guide.  This information is also, typically, provided by the course instructor.  Once you have your technical support team identified, my advice is to begin exploring the class portal and determining that your equipment meets the requirements.

Some questions to ask yourself are:

• Does this require a specific browser for best quality performance?
• Is my internet connection powerful enough to keep up?
• Not too many people are relying on dial-up modems these days, but you still want to make sure that you computer can handle the system.
•  Do I have a back-up plan/alternative workspace?
• You should plan to have a primary computer and a back-up location from which to work.

In exploring the class portal, clicking around and making sure "things work" is a good idea.  Doing so will help you to know if you're going to be utilizing that support team for help.  Also, you might discover you have questions for your instructor that can be answered early in the course.

Knowing your online environment and the tools within the portal is a key to your success in the class, so take the time to familiarize yourself.

------------------------------------------------------------

Research tools are also very available online, but knowing your sources is just as important as knowing the course portal.  Your online sources should be carefully reviewed to see if they are reliable and trustworthy.  Remember, the internet is a tool that we all have access to, and most anyone can throw up a web-page.

Some helpful tips on determining the source's reliability are:

• Look for an author's name and credentials (is this person qualified on the topic?)
• Look for a page's last updated stamp (is the material recent?)
• Note how far down on the list of results the information is

 Also, you can access your college/university library online and gain access to hundreds, if not thousands of journals and articles.  This is another great reason to know who is on the help desk staff with your library.