Familiarize yourself with your online learning system's personalized homepage provided by your college or university. Most university online systems present all of your learning resources in a centralized location, including access to specific course pages, educational resources and student support services. For example, the University of North Texas uses Blackboard Vista 4.2, which provides access to streaming lectures, teleconferencing capabilities, student support and course resources using a centralized format.
Explore each of your course's educational resources by clicking on an individual course and downloading available archived lectures, electronic readings, graphical interfaces and video presentations. Each course will also provide a calendar of assignments and exam schedules.
Participate in the network of discussion forums provided by your university's online platform. Discussion forums provide students and instructors a place in which to communicate directly about learning issues, debate material and coordinate group projects. Discussion forums, which displace traditional classroom discussions, contain vast amounts of information and are archived for students to access at any point. Such forums are typically accessible either from your online learning system's personalized homepage, or from the main page for each individual course.
Conduct original research via the online library provided by your university, which contains online textbooks, electronic access to academic journals and publications, and access to physical collections. Online libraries, just like traditional, physical libraries, are where online students engage in a majority of their independent research. Most online learning systems provide a link to the online library from your personalized homepage. For example, the University of North Carolina Online system provides students with access to electronic library resources for its 16 member schools.
Contact student support services to receive individualized help from academic advisers, academic mentors, technical support staff, tutorial services and financial aid officers. Many online universities provide substantial academic advising, mentoring support services and tutorial services online through your personalized homepage. Students can often contact academic advisers and tutorial services via live chats and personalized email.