Online learning is a great platform for students to learn diversified skills while still pursuing their ongoing courses. Online tutoring today is increasingly becoming the preferred learning platform for students to enhance their knowledge and refine their skills. E-learning offers the benefit of learning without the constraint of location. So long as a student has access to a computer with an internet connection, they are ready to learn online. However, a lot of students make mistakes that hamper their capability to gain the maximum out of such courses.

Getting distracted

While having the comfort of learning from anywhere looks promising a lot of students get distracted as their study environment is not structured like a classroom. The place they might be studying from might be noisy, disturbing, etc which leads to lower levels of concentration and understanding. Although the place of study might be one factor distracting the students, some other factors are also at play. For instance, students often feel that the absence of a teacher in their room gives them the freedom to indulge in distracting activities during an online lesson. At times, students forget that the objective of online tutoring is the same as classroom learning, i.e. enhancing their knowledge. As a result, they take their online class and virtual subject matter expert lightly, not giving 100% attention.

Therefore, students need to practice self-discipline in the absence of any monitoring to prevent ignoring the lecture.

 Going unplanned

The next mistake that students often make is not having a concrete plan in hand ahead of an online tutoring session. More often than not, online sessions are time bound. Unless students have a structured plan about what they want to derive out of the session, they will end up wasting their time and money. It is common for students to take online learning lightly. They just show up without any focus area and roadmap for the particular session. This not only leads to time wastage due to identifying the plan but may also frustrate the subject matter expert. As a result, the online tutor might lose interest in helping out the student because of their showing up unplanned reflecting their lack of motivation.

Thus, it is definitely a good idea to have a plan for the session beforehand. This will help you ascertain that you do not waste even a minute of your precious session in deliberating over what you need assistance with.

Being a passive listener

Learning in a conventional classroom is always interactive. Students can discuss the lesson with fellow classmates and clarify doubts with their teachers.   In an online learning platform, as students are not in a classroom they tend to just listen to the lecture. This generally lowers the understanding and retention of the lesson for the student. Additionally, the tutor may lose interest by just engaging in a monologue if the student does not participate actively.

Therefore, instead of being a passive listener, students should take part in the discussion. Be it with the expert tutor or fellow students via online message boards, chat rooms etc. Active participation in an online class can almost double up the chances of securing better grades.

Going unprepared

Many times students fail to understand that like any of the conventional classes an online class too, requires pre-reading and understanding of the subject for them to gain the maximum out of an e-learning session.  Due to the absence of fear of punishment, like in a classroom learning setting, students often do not finish the work they were assigned by their online subject matter experts. This invariably dilutes the motivation of the online tutor as well.

Therefore, it is best to go for an online class with full preparation. It will not only help you keep your expert tutor in good stead, but will also help you learn better.

In a nutshell, these are 4 mistakes that students often make during online learning sessions that may hamper their performance. If students are able to take care of these common pitfalls, no force in the universe can stop them from leveraging the potential of online tutoring and boosting their grades.