Time Management Skills for Students: How to Thrive in Your Online Classes?

In the post-pandemic world, time management is the key to leading a productive life. Students must gain all insights into this skill to know how it helps them to thrive better in their academic life.

Read further to know all this and much more.

What Is Time Management?

In the simplest terms, time management is the practice that helps in making effective use of time. It helps in improving productivity. And also reduces the stress caused by unplanned or poorly planned work. Today, managing time is an essential soft skill. As per an interesting report published by ‘Forbes’, soft skills are so important that they are featured in almost 78% of jobs (in 2022).

importance of soft skills in jobs | time management skills for students

Why Are Time Management Skills for students Important ?

The paradigm of teaching and learning is changing rapidly. Today, online schooling, distance learning, hybrid models, etc. have gained the trust of several students and stakeholders. In the United States, 21% of the public schools offered an online course (2017-18). And 45.8% of these had an enrollment of over 1000 students.

In an online learning environment, time management skills for students play a critical role. Here’s more.

Academic Success

Time management tips for students keep students organized. And help them to stay away from issues like academic procrastination. All this supports academic success. And makes students more focused on productive work. These facts are also proved by researchers. In fact, experts have also emphasized developing these soft skills from the school-going years. These years lay the foundation for building capacities to prioritize, control, manage, and organize work, studies, and professional life at a later stage.

Avoiding Academic Procrastination

The most critical time management tips for online students always aim at reducing academic procrastination. The skill of managing one’s time reduces this threat considerably. It also helps in teaching them the ways to break down their tasks. And stick to them in time intervals. And manage better through periodic breaks.

Understanding the Importance of Schedules

In today’s highly competitive world, time management strategies are a must to instill qualities that can help them in the long run. These soft skills lead to professional success. Because people who identify time wasters also manage to avoid these. All in all, they end up being more productive in the workplace. The habit of planning schedules, using calendars, reminders, etc. creates win-win situations in adulthood as well.

Managing Stress

Interestingly, studies have shown some great aspects of stress namely positive and negative. It is proven that too much stress negatively affects a student’s focus, readiness, performance, etc. While positive stress has the power to maximize their academic performance. The best part about time management skills is that it also improves one’s overall life satisfaction by up to 72%. In this way, it reduces one’s stress levels considerably.

time management skills for students improves overall satisfaction

Time Management Strategies: The Expert’s Opinion

Managing time as a student is not as simple as it sounds. However, many of us underestimate this problem. And ignore the warning signs in many ways. Here’s what experts have to say about time management for students. We are listing down some pieces of expert advice to help you with long-term retention.

American Psychological Association (APA)- Research-Backed Facts

Spacing and Long-Term Memory

Several researchers have confirmed a positive correlation between spacing sessions (for study over a longer period) and long-term memory. In simple words, spacing is a practical solution for many issues related to recalling academic content. And it is highly effective to make a second-level attempt with a new session after some time of completing the previous session.

We can help develop time management skills for students by teaching them some techniques like spacing for better retention. For online students who attend virtual classes, this approach is quite beneficial. They can collaborate with their peers. And seek the help of their teachers to create a common workable schedule to study up the previous lessons.

Do you know that APA confirmed that this strategy showed brilliant results with college students?

49% of them who used a large spacing time (big stack) remembered better from a given group of words. While only 36% of them studied the same words in small stacks did not remember that well.

Mixing and Relearning

The next piece of advice is about creating a mixed-learning experience called ‘interleaving’ for a deep learning experience. It can be difficult for many teachers and students in a traditional schooling environment. But in an accredited online school, interwoven teaching styles are quite common.

<At International Schooling, we adopt the industry’s best practices through the handholding of our prestigious accreditors.

Our teachers are experts in multidisciplinary teaching and interweaving knowledge. And all this boils down to a superior learning experience.>

When you mix up things, it breaks the monotony. Because students realize the differences and similarities better. In other words, this practice helps students to take note of all important details.

Revision and Recall Testing

This one is not one of the common time management tips. However, if done creatively it helps in yielding great results. APA highlights that students can learn better when they are made to recall the knowledge that they had gained in the past. Once again, online platforms do master the art of creative questioning through puzzles, engaging quizzes, AI-supported online resources, and feature-loaded end-of-lesson assignments.

Studies have proved that students who attempt daily quizzes perform better than the ones who do not attempt these.

Top Time Management Tips for Students

After these enlightening facts, let’s decode some realistic time management tips for students. Please note that these tips are from the stakeholder’s perspective. But can be used by students as well.

Start Simple

Most of us do understand the importance of time management for students. But again, we should never overdo the strategies for online students. Many online students have prior commitments. So you must keep things simple and balanced. Simple functions in an online calendar like aligning activities for the day, month, year, etc. through drag-and-drop options are just the right way to begin. Motivate your students to choose themes, and colorful backgrounds, to break the monotony.

Create Schedules

The first part of the day, or even month is ideal to plan the rest. Either way, help them to spare this time by explaining how this saves a bigger chunk of it. Remember that online students can plan time management strategies better because they are already proficient with digital devices. You can always use their skills to support other soft skills like time management.

Back in the year 2012, 62% of students took an online course as it was convenient. It is noteworthy that nothing much changed after a decade. Because 42% of students confirmed that they took an online course because they had commitments. Hence they could not attend in-person classes and wanted a convenient design.

People choosing online learning for improving their time management skills

Unplug from Social Media

The importance of a digital detox goes without saying in a world where 61% of people are addicted to the mindless scrolling of digital screens. WebMD (a leading American website for healthcare information) confirms that the use of social media brings down productivity. In fact, the excessive use of the internet is also related to poor sleep quality, unhealthy eating, depression, stress, etc.

It will be easy managing time as a student if there is a dedicated time frame completely free from social media apps. Help your students learn the importance of saving high energy productive hours of the day without the use of time-wasting activities (like social media). Once again, the student can make use of planners to mark this time during the asynchronous learning duration.

Percentage of people addicted to internet

Grouping

You can also help the student to develop time management skills by using techniques like grouping similar activities/tasks. For instance, activities that require collaboration, teacher support, or class discussions (for doubt clearing, etc.) are better when they are aligned during peak working hours. Similarly, most of the offline activities (printable worksheets, etc.) are best in the later or odd hours. Students can make use of attractive calendars, reminders, and planners to group these tasks.

Switch to Single-Tasking

For online students, single-tasking is a savior that helps them to complete a task well and saves time. Interestingly, only 2.5% of people in the world can multitask!

As humans, mono-tasking is the most time-saving solution for most of us. This way, there is no need to repeat a task or reattempt anything that goes wrong because of our distracted mind. Teachers/parents/stakeholders can help students largely by promoting an attitude of sticking to ‘one thing at a time’.

percentage of people in the world can do multitask

Conclusion

Skills like time management skills for students are beneficial for their overall well-being and academic success. We hope this information helped you to comprehend the importance of this soft skill. Go ahead and utilize your time well to unlock bigger and better opportunities for success!

Thanks for Reading

Frequently Asked Questions

Which are the best time management strategies for students?
The best time management strategies for students are:
- Creating schedules
- Avoiding notifications and having gadget-free time in the day
- Practicing single-tasking
- Grouping similar tasks
- Reducing chances of procrastination
- Sticking to deadlines

How can online students avoid academic procrastination for time management?
You must focus on strong planning. And try to break small chunks of study hours to stay motivated. For most students, setting their own deadlines can also help to manage time effectively.

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