Home study is no longer a futuristic possibility or an activity to be reserved for holidays. We all know what happened. The year 2020 has brought us a pandemic that no one expected, and we have gone from going to school, university, or college to learning online from the comfort of our own homes.
As much as it seems like distance learning is part of our normal lives, you probably don’t know exactly how to study at home. So in this article, we’re going to tell you about 4 tips for studying at home and how you can apply each of these tips. If you still find studying at home challenging, you can pay to do my essay for me with reliable custom writing services.
The reality of studying at home
As you may have noticed, the benefits of studying at home are manifold. Of course, you’ll love it if you don’t have to spend the time and money to travel to a training center. And that’s great.
But, as you also know, learning from home has its major challenges and problems. From not being able to find a suitable place to focus to feeling isolated or overwhelmed by the lack of classmates and the amount of information you have to process alone.
All of these can have a negative impact on the learning process and, therefore, on your career. So, here are our 4 recommendations on how to study at home without losing the thread of learning.
1. Create a suitable study space
All good learning at home begins with finding or arranging the conditions of a physical space to study.
Although you may think that studying while sitting in bed or lying on the floor is the most comfortable thing in the world, you may make a mistake that will be very detrimental to your development as a student.
You have to identify a place at home for studying where you can put a desk, have a laptop or computer and study materials at hand, and where there are no visible distractions.
Tips for setting up a study space at home
- Set up a study table with plenty of space for materials.
- Place books, papers, documents, appliances, technological devices, and all the necessary materials for homeschooling nearby.
- Try to locate near an outside window to provide natural light and fresh air.
- Add ambient scents and music to your study hours.
2. Determine your short-term and long-term study goals
Once you have created a suitable space, you need to identify your learning goals. These should be directly related to the courses and assignments you complete during the week and throughout the school semester.
You may have to study at home to prepare for a midterm exam. You may be doing research for a final paper. And maybe you’re even gathering information for your dissertation.
Whether your goal is one or the other, it is highly recommended that you identify actions that will lead you to complete them promptly to ensure the best possible academic results. This is another important prerequisite for homeschooling.
Actions to achieve your goals
- Use the SMART formula: specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound goals.
- Write down your sub-goals and specific goals on a piece of paper or in a digital file.
- Use digital tools to write down your goals and keep track of them.
- Determine a specific date and daily amount of time you will devote to studying according to your goals.
3. Create a study calendar
Once you have created the right space and defined your goals, you need to manage your study time at home.
You may think that the more hours you spend reading books, writing texts, taking notes, and researching sources, the better you will learn.
However, this is an old myth. Studying at home requires quality time and very good organization throughout the day, with your learning goals and tasks to be accomplished. Therefore, you have to know how to prepare a very specific study plan.
For example, if you are preparing for a marketing course exam, you might write, “I will review course materials for 60 minutes on Monday and Tuesday”. That way, you’ll know how much time to devote to each assignment, course, or class, and it won’t affect your time and effort allocation for everything else.
Tips for creating a home study schedule
- Determine the times of day when you are most productive and least distracted.
- Use a physical calendar or digital task planner.
- Don’t fill your calendar with too many activities in one day. Distribute them evenly throughout the week.
- Use the Pomodoro learning technique or other recommended learning techniques to enhance your learning.
4. Learn how to organize your notes in class
Like any good student, you probably take a lot of notes during class. Whether you are more traditional and do it on sheets of paper, or you write on digital tools for virtual classes, you must keep these notes in order.
They should be organized by course or subject, show the most important ideas from the book or lecture, and combine visual and text formatting. Everything you write down in these notes should help reinforce in your memory what you learned or researched during class at home.
Tips for taking class notes at home
- Use tools to organize ideas.
- Turn your notes into flashcards to take advantage of interval repetition.
- Link wrote concepts to pictures, videos, graphs, and drawings.
- Don’t copy verbatim what you read or hear. Write the information in your own words.
Conclusion
While not paradise, the benefits of homeschooling are attractive: less time and money spent on travel, the comfort of home, access to a variety of courses and content, independence in managing your time to study, etc.
But, as you’ve learned from our previous tips, the benefits of studying at home are useless unless you organize your study space, time, and classes in the best way possible. Remember that autonomous learning empowers you and requires more skills than those required of a traditional student.
We hope these tips for studying at home help you develop as a student.
