Due to many personal reasons and of course, COVID-19, I have decided to live at home for my final year of university and only travel to Sheffield when necessary. Not only has this been a large adjustment for me in terms of learning to study online, but also adjusting to the work demands in my final year. Today I’m going to share with you how my experience has been going so far and some tips that might help you.

Joining my seminars online

This is perhaps the biggest change I’ve experienced this year so far. Joining seminars via Zoom with a few others whilst some of our classmates are sitting in class is certainly an odd, and somewhat jarring experience. For me, this experience has also been quite varied seminar-to-seminar. Sometimes I can hear everything that is said in the classroom, and other times I can only hear the faint murmurs of my classmates.  It goes without saying that I much prefer the classes in which I can hear everything as it helps me to feel fully involved and incorporated into the class atmosphere but sometimes this is not possible due to the room layout. As it now seems the university are putting more classes online for the foreseeable future, I’d like to offer you all some tips on how to make the most from your online seminars…

• Be prepared. This seems obvious but getting up to grab drinks or more stationary can mean you miss out on things said in class so be sure you’ve got everything you need before it starts.
• Be tech-savvy. Now you don’t need to be a tech genius, but actually learning how to properly use Zoom and Blackboard will really enable you to make the most of the online learning materials.
• Be involved. This involves answering questions when you know the answer, collaborating with your groups when necessary and doing the work recommended.

Online lectures

For my course, all lectures are currently only available online (mainly posted to YouTube!). Here’s some of my thoughts in regard to this:

• NO MORE MISSED CONTENT! (Hurrah!) We’ve all sat in a lecture when the lecturer talks just a tad too fast or we write too slowly… meaning we inevitably miss content and have gaps in our notes that we have to fill in when we get back home. No more! With online videos, you can pause them when necessary to understand and make notes on the content.
• Settings -> playback speed (you can thank me later!)
• You can watch it whenever! I’ve loved being able to make my timetable more customisable as I can watch (and re-watch) the lectures whenever suits me best.

I hope some of these tips can help you when studying online, regardless of what year you are currently in.

Good luck!

Rhianne J

Written by #HallamInsider Rhianne Saunders