Becoming a successful online learner: Take control

Manage your electronic files effectively

Learning online can often lead to information overload: it is easy to become overwhelmed by the volume of information available. One helpful strategy for organising information is to use the same structure and naming conventions for both your electronic and paper files. You should also keep records of any useful electronic documents or websites that you find. Useful resources for this include:

• del.icio.us (pronounced as "delicious"): a tool for storing, sharing, and discovering web bookmarks.
• Refworks: a personalised online database for saving your references from library database searches.

Keep back ups!

Keep copies of all important messages, assignments etc. If you are using Office software, configure it to keep back ups and to auto recover files.

When working on a long message or assignment submission then consider working on a draft offline, and then pasting the final copy into Moodle when you are ready to submit, just in case you lose your connection before you post.

It is worth investing in a portable back up device and backing up your files to this at least once per week: that way, if something happens to your computer, you will still have a copy of your data.

Install anti virus software

Make sure that you have antivirus software installed on any personal computers, and that you keep it up to date.

Think before you print!

Scan documents before you decide to print them. Doing so will save time, printing costs and trees!