One of the key characteristics about online learning is that how you learn is to a significant extent up to you. This means you need to reflect on how you learn best. For more information, check out this video.

Planning your learning is important, and it is advisable to set times in your calendar when you will be working on the course. Think about what works best for your learning and your current schedule. For more ideas, check out this video.

It is important to put whatever you find in an online course into the context of your own situation. To do this, and to avoid getting lost in all the material and discussions, you can create a learning diary. The Learning Diary should be a collection of all elements from the course relevant to your own context. A good Learning Diary will provide you with a summary of the course at a later stage and focus your attention on those areas that are especially relevant to you.

For more information, check out the different examples on this Sutori page, as well as this presentation:

In most MOOCs, learning doesn’t just happen via the course content, but more importantly by connecting to and drawing from the library of experiences, views, and practices that the multitude of participants bring to the course. Ideally, through participation in the course, you will build or extend your personal learning network online. For more details on this, see this video.

The team behind each course is usually very small, making it difficult to respond to questions in a timely manner. Therefore, you will always be better off trying to find an answer yourself, then directing your question to your peers. Only if neither of these methods has yielded a solution should you go to the course team for support. For more details on how to find support, check out this video.