PPEL – 10 ways to become successful online students
Cindy Wolfe (2009). 10 Ways to Ensure Distance Learning Success, available at http://elearnmag.org/subpage.cfm?section=best_practices&article=62-1. Accessed on 29-12-2009.
In this article the author mentions the need of online students taking an active role in their learning process. According to 
Cindy Wolfe there are 10 ways of ensuring success in distance learning courses:
1. Read the course guide and use it as a roadmap
2. Turn in all assignments complete and on time
3. Pay attention to newly available contents and resources. Follow them carefully week by week
4. Search for one new idea in every class session, assignment and reading. “I suggest writing down what you discover in a notebook and referring back to it each time you start a new learning session. Use what you learn today as a building block for what you learn tomorrow.”
5. Support and encourage fellow classmates
6. Contribute to discussions
7. Stay organised
8. Never procrastinate. “Start future assignments early and build them day by day”.
9. Consider how your experience fits into the discussion
10. Set long term goals.
I really think that these 10 ways described by cindy in her article work as advice as well. I am an online student and I identify myself with all of these. It is really important that we stay organised and follow all the activities and new posts by the colleagues and the teachers every day. Otherwise we get lost.
We need support from colleagues and teachers because with the amount of messages and deadlines we sometimes get a bit desperate 
but in the end, if we follow these 10 steps, everything works out ok.
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About me…
Hi! I am Sandra Brás. I am Portuguese, living in Amsterdam, where I work as a trainer for a company in the Internet Business.
I am doing a Master’s degree in eLearning Pedagogy at the Open University in Lisbon and I created this blog to publish some of my work during the course.
Hi Sandra,
I am glad that my article spoke to you! So many students simply do not invest themselves in the class. With 100% personal engagement, students are sure to match “learning with life.” Which of these ten points do you find most relevant?
Hi Cindy!
Nice to hear from you!
As an online student, although I think all the points you mention are extremely important, from experience I would say that all the other points depend on points 3, 7 and 8. When we are not organised, when we miss forums openings or new material / activities we need a lot of effort in order to follow the course again, and to finish all the assignments in time.
It’s very easy to get lost in an online course. Lots of discussion happens every day, many assignments are available and a lot of material to read and research to do. If all these things accumulate it is more and more difficult to do everything with the level we’d like and to follow all the new assignments that may show up.
[...] PPEL – Question/Answer activity – Cindy Wolfe As part of Activity 2 of PPEL (Pedagogical Processes in E-Learning), Professor Morten suggested us to ask a question to the author of an article we found interesting. I chose the article “10 ways to ensure distance learning success“, written by Cindy Wolfe (you can also find a sort description of this article in a previous post). [...]