Where to Go From Here

Start by exploring Moodle and learning how to use the Messaging and Forum functions.

Practice sending messages to your teacher;

Notice that on the Course Topics where the layout of your course is presented. Experiment with the drop down menu at the top right of the screen. Don't worry, you cannot break it. Your teacher can answer questions, as well.

Click on a link. A Lesson page will have a question at the bottom. Click to check your answer and navigate to the next page. Resources are pages that have no interactive questions. You navigate through them by clicking the arrow in the top right of your screen. Exercises and tests have several questions on one screen. You can save the exercise or test without grading it, and come back later to finish. What happens when you reach the end of a lesson? Are you sent back to the table of contents? Where are the tests and practice exercises located? How do you access them? You can answer all of these questions just by clicking around in a lesson and trying out how the buttons work.

Now, try it out. Click away. Don't worry. Ask questions. Reward yourself! Share your success!

Study Tips

There are several strategies that you should use when taking an online course. This is a very different form of education than classroom-based courses are. Here are some strategies that will help you:

  1. Spend at least a few minutes every day or every other day working on the lessons and exercises. Frequent, shorter study periods are better for learning than fewer, longer study periods. The GED tests what you know and how well you can express yourself, not what you can memorize in a short time.
  2. Set up a quiet space for you to work that is free from distractions.
  3. Try to study around the same time every day, or every night. Studying will become a habit that will become part of your daily routine.
  4. Take advantage of the class discussion group. This is a wonderful forum for you to visit with other students and find out what a neat group of people are enrolled in OLT courses. The class discussion forum tends to be slow traffic, but it's okay to be the only person posting for a while. Perhaps others are shy and will decide to join in if someone else is already there.
  5. Keep working. Remember what your goals are. Your goals led you to enroll, and your goals will see you through to completion!
  6. Remember to check in regularly with your teacher. To have a good student-teacher relationship you will need to check in, even just to say "hello."
  7. Your teacher is not at the other end of the keyboard when you have a question. Find out from your teacher when he or she will be online or will have office hours if you want to have a "live" discussion via Moodle messaging. Otherwise, post your questions in an e-mail and expect to allow 24 to 48 hours for your teacher to get back to you.
    1. Your OLT teacher is your biggest fan! The entire faculty gets really excited each time there is a new GED completion. You have a fan club at OLT that you can count on!
    2. If you have a question about a specific problem on a specific page or test, please give as much information about the page or the problem. The teachers cannot track where a student is in the course without this information. Also, many of the tests are "randomized." That means that there is a pool of questions but only a certain number are put into a test by the computer. You may refer to question 5, but it would not be question 5 in the larger list of questions. It helps very much to be very specific.

An Important Note:

We spend a good portion of our lives waiting. Always carry a book with you to read while you are waiting. Read the book whenever you have a few minutes, whether you are waiting for someone, waiting in line at the store, waiting in a traffic jam, waiting for anything. Choose any type of book, but a book that is about the subject of the course is a good choice

Throughout the process of preparing to take the GED, one fact exists: You cannot pass the GED without being a good reader. The only way to be a good reader is by reading. Read as often as you can. Read a wide variety of materials. Read the newspaper daily. Read fiction and non-fiction. Read! Read! Read!

 


Last modified: Friday, 1 April 2016, 5:41 PM