Making online study work for me

I’m a father of two, a professional cricketer with the Queensland Bulls and I’m doing a Bachelor of Commerce online through Griffith University.

The good thing about online is that when I have the time, everything’s there. You can be in four classes at once, provided you can focus. You control your own destiny in terms of where and when you work and I think that can be quite liberating.

Here are a few things I do to help myself succeed online:

Limit distraction

Sitting down to watch a lecture or a tutorial, I have everything I need within reach. It’s nice to have snacks ready to go – mute yourself if you’re having a bag of chips.

I make sure that I’ve got unfettered access and no one’s going to come in and distract me. For example, my wife is working from home in the other room and if the kids are at home, they’re downstairs instead of up here, throwing balls at me.

Ask for help

My brother-in-law was trying to show me how to restring a guitar on Zoom and I had to pull the camera around and show him what was going on and it was difficult. But you do have a lot of access online. You can always email, you can always ask for a meeting and you can do that from anywhere at any time. And if there’s something that you’re having difficulty with, you can stop, go back and watch it again.

Get organised

I’ve fallen into the trap where you’ll go for two or three weeks and life will grab and run with you and then you’ll realise you’ve got a lot of uni work to get back to and all of a sudden, you’re scrambling.

It can be difficult early on because you don’t have lecturers and tutors constantly reminding you – you have to remind yourself.

Making sure that you’re organised, that you have everything laid out and you’re on top of when your assessment is due, is key for studying online.

Find more information about how to study online successfully at Griffith’s Thrive Online website.

By Cameron Gannon