When attendance is not required, you can plan your time more individually according to your own schedule. This requires you to be organized and take responsibility for managing your time and tracking your progress. Here are some tips to help you stay on track:
- Create a study schedule
- Focus on studying and eliminate distractions
- Set measurable goals in your study schedule to better track your progress
(e.g. which chapters need to be read by when and when assignments need to be submitted) - Keep the course objectives in mind (you can find them in the course guide, for example) and take notes with these objectives in mind.
- Take breaks, exercise, go outside and sleep well: Good sleep is a student’s superpower!
Group work and study circles using remote tools available for students
You can do group work and participate in self-organized study circles remotely through video conferencing. With these remote tools, you can arrange remote meetings without the presence of a teacher:
Remember, however, that the tools provided by the school are intended for study use. Shared coffee breaks are considered part of study use.
You can organize study circles, for example, through the Tuudo bulletin board (Plaza).
Gathering information
You can access almost all of the library’s electronic resources from home by going to the resources through the library’s Oula-Finna or information retrieval guides. Check the library’s remote access guide on the library’s website. Another option is to use a VPN connection, which allows you to access electronic resources directly from the school’s network.
Taking notes will help you learn
You can take notes by hand or on your computer.
- Take a look at tips by the Open University of Helsinki
- The Cornell Note-taking technique guides you to record your own observations and make a final summary.
- MS Office 365 includes MS OneNote, which also has a handy mobile version. (Accessible with student credentials)
- Google’s G Suite includes Google Keep. (Accessible with student credentials)
- You can also make your annotations in files, for example:
- In Microsoft Office Word, you have a highlighter, comments and a change tracking tool.
- In Acrobat Reader, you can add comments to files if the author allows it.
- You can keep a learning diary, for example, in Google’s Blogger. It can be private or public.
- Keep your notes organized. You can create a folder in OneDrive for each of your courses and add your notes there. Did you know that you can add not only files but also web links to your OneDrive folder? This way, you can gather all the essential links for the course, such as a link to your learning diary, a direct link to the Moodle course, Teams, or any online material you need. (Note: Make regular backups to your own computer as well.)
Use flashcards, for example, for language studies
Flashcards are particularly suitable for studying and reviewing languages or terms. There are several applications available for this purpose, but none are offered with student credentials. One good open-source option is Anki.
Other tips for remote studying
The importance of time management is emphasized in remote studying.
- Have you already made a study schedule for yourself? If not, here are some tips on how to create one:
- List your courses, their implementation times, and credits.
- Calculate how many working days there are during the course implementation.
- Mark the scheduled teaching events in your calendar and calculate the time they take.
- Add times for independent study to your calendar. (As a rough guide, you can use the estimate that one credit equals about 27 hours of study, so if a course is 2 credits and the scheduled events take 17 hours, the estimated time needed for independent study would be 37 hours.)
- Distribute tasks to the study times you have reserved. Think about the order in which you will go through the materials and mark in the calendar what you plan to do each day. If you need to read a book, use the table of contents to create a reading plan.
- Note: You can use tools like Planner included in MS Office 365 for task planning and scheduling. (See the Planner introduction/tutorial video on YouTube)
- Mark daily plans in your calendar so that there is also time for meals, rest, exercise, and hobbies.
- If necessary, you can adjust the plan if you find that it was too loose or too tight.
- Over time, you will learn how much time you need to study certain types of material. Reading speed is individual, and the difficulty of the material also affects it. Reviewing is faster than learning new things. When you read a textbook, you can calculate after the study session how long it took you to study the number of pages you covered. This helps you understand if you have estimated your needs correctly.
When you study, focus on actually studying
- Try the effective and popular Pomodoro technique:
- Choose a topic,
- Study it continuously for 25 minutes (use a kitchen timer, smart watch, phone timer, or even a browser-based tomato timer),
- Take a 5-minute break and repeat the cycle.
- After the fourth 25-minute session (Pomodoro, which means “tomato” in Italian), you can take a longer break, e.g., 20-30 minutes.
- Some people like to study in longer sessions, and that’s perfectly fine: If you can immerse yourself in the topic and reach a flow state, time flies. After a longer session, take a longer break, go for a walk, or take a nap!
- If you find that you can’t concentrate for 25 minutes at a time, it would be good to think about why that is. Studying takes time, and you need concentration to be able to study.
- Prevent distractions:
- Use noise-canceling headphones or earplugs if necessary.
- If you work on a computer, set Teams to “Do not disturb” mode so you don’t get notifications.
- Turn off notifications from the social media services you use and from email – instead, try scheduling a time in your day to read emails (and messages received on social media).
- Put your phone on silent and even place it in another room if it would otherwise take too much of your attention.
- Alternatively, you can try different apps that help with concentration, such as:
- However, consider this: maybe the best option for you is to simply put your phone out of sight during study time! 😉
- Take care of good ergonomics (a good chair, the right distance from the screen, etc.) and sufficient lighting. Adjust the room temperature if necessary and have everything you need ready (e.g., computer, note-taking tools, possible textbook, and a glass of water).
Good sleep is a student’s superpower
When your routines are in order, you can focus on studying and recovering from studying. Good night’s sleep is essential for learning: When you are well-rested, you are ready to learn, and after studying, things stick better in your mind when you get a good night’s sleep. The best thing you can do for your brain the night before an exam is to let it rest. Did you know that you should go to sleep three hours after studying formulas and concepts and one hour after studying a sequence of movements (Marcu, 2015)? One of the joys of remote studying is that you can take a nap even in the middle of the day. Naps trigger the brain’s organization process, says brain researcher Minna Huotilainen (Svensk, 2019).
- Marcu, Shai. (2015) The benefits of a good night’s sleep, TED-Ed video (Finnish subtitles available)
- Walker, Matt (2019). Sleep is your superpower, TED2019 video
- Svensk, Tiina (2019). Forget cramming, take a nap instead – With the right study technique, you can achieve wonders, says brain researcher Minna Huotilainen, YLE
Check out the Digital Workshop’s tips for effective time management: