As a parent, ensuring that your child is ready to take on the challenges presented by distance learning should be one of your priorities right now. Many aspects of learning have certainly been disrupted by the ongoing health situation — but this doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t support your child through it. Like many other parents, you may want to consider the following strategies to enhance distance learning.
Avoid procrastinating
No one is exempt from procrastination. Without the usual features that define a classroom environment, distance learning may seem to be an insurmountable challenge in the beginning. There are many elements in the home that can easily lead your child to procrastinate while studying.
It’s important that children are able to overcome these obstacles of studying at home. Help them understand their underlying the difficulties they are facing and create ways to handle them. It’s far too often the case that your child is putting off work because they feel that it is too hard. Encourage your child to face this trial head-on, as this is the only way of navigating through the difficulty.
Maximize use of online resources
Children are arguably much more tech-savvy than most parents. As such, there’s no better way of turning this into something more productive, than by allowing them to maximize the use of online resources.
Your child’s learning strategies may be different from other children and the internet is filled with resources to meet this need. For example, your child may understand the lesson better with the help of interactive videos. On the other hand, some children learn better through hands-on learning.
Distance learning is all about making the most out of the available learning resources for your child. There are tons of distance learning material on the internet that your child will utilize to his or her advantage. Your job is to help them access these and use them to enhance their learning.
Study the learning platform beforehand
Your children’s instructors will likely introduce them to the learning platform that they will use once their online classes begin. Set some time to help your child become familiar with this platform.
Known as learning management systems, these platforms are what aid both the instructor and the student in the distance learning process. This is where they’ll upload homework, papers, reports, and other kinds of deliverables. Meanwhile, teachers will use this to evaluate the performance of the students.
These systems are usually accompanied with a friendly user interface for everyone’s convenience, but it’s still a smart decision to help your child study it beforehand, so they won’t experience problems such as delayed submissions, missed deadlines, and the like.
Break up your modules
Breaking up the learning modules is another useful tip that you should use for distance learning.
Once more, the convenience of digital platforms may enable your child’s instructor to upload all of the term’s course material in one go. Your child may become overwhelmed with the plethora of information that they need to learn. Help them in this endeavor by breaking up the lessons into more manageable chunks. In this way, your child would be able to more easily digest any new information they’re presented with.
Stick to a schedule
Finally, set an example for your child by also encouraging them to stick to a rigid schedule for the day. Your child may have gotten used to the comforts of not having to wake up early, or simply lounging about at home — adopting a schedule helps them get better acquainted with their new learning environment.
A schedule helps your child in forming better habits. When they have a scheduled time to wake up and begin their distance learning classes, they’ll begin to feel like they’re back in their regular classes. One great benefit of this is that it will greatly shorten the adjustment period as they take on this unfamiliar method of learning.
Key Takeaway
These are just some of the strategies to enhance distance learning for your child, who’s also living a double life as a student. It’s far too easy to just let them relax — but this will ultimately be detrimental to how productive the distance learning process is going to be.
The key is to invest your time in guiding and helping them in this new set up. Whether it’s encouraging your child to start doing their homework or to stick to a schedule, your involvement will already go a long way in helping your child transition to this kind of learning arrangement.
