Welcome to Innovative Learning Week – day 2

Studying while you are working can be a challenging experience, and the situation will no doubt be very much the same for those of you who are not currently in paid employment but who are balancing study alongside other responsibilities and ongoing commitments.

The question we are addressing today is:   What helps?

A number of Edinburgh ODL graduates gave us an insight into what helped them to succeed. A few themes became apparent from the comments received:

Having a genuine interest in the subject makes a real difference:

• The key is to do something that really interests you.   I have completed two ODL Masters programmes but previously had started another one.   The latter was less interesting and was less relevant to me on a day to day basis.   Additionally, do it at the right time of life; I started that when my son was a toddler – so all too much.
• It helped that the subject was really something I wanted to explore and courses were fun!

It’s all about your motivation and drive, and how you approach your studies:

• Good organization, a weekly schedule and discipline.
• Self-discipline when it comes to allocating time to study.
• Pure determination – nothing else helps!
• Prioritization and Discipline.
• I had a strong will to succeed at my degree.
• Consulting my workmates, and scheduling my time between work and studies.
• I did a little bit of coursework every day or every other day instead of leaving it all to my days off. It made the workload more manageable and kept me focused.

Explore alternative working arrangements:

• Flexible work hours help – make use of this if you have the opportunity.

It’s been a few years since I completed my own distance learning course but finding somewhere to work was an initial concern; maybe some of you can relate to that. The solution for me was to spend regular evenings and quite a few Saturdays in the office. The peace and quiet was wonderful and having access to a good PC a bonus. I was fortunate that my employer was very supportive.

What has helped you?

Share your views on Twitter – twitter.com/uofedcareers   # EdODLcareers

Check out our next Career Connect post tomorrow.