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:

• Spend at least a few minutes every day or every other day working on the lessons. Frequent, shorter study periods are better for learning than fewer, longer study periods. The GED will test how you think about information and how well you can express yourself, not what you can memorize in a short time.
• 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."
• 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 e-mail. Otherwise, post your questions in an e-mail and expect to allow 24 to 48 hours for your teacher to get back to you.
• 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.
• 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 ok 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.
• Keep working. Remember what your goals are. Your goals led you to enroll, and your goals will see you through to completion!
• 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!

An Important Note:

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!