Nov 24 2008
To Print or Not to Print
Students taking online classes often wonder how much material they should choose to print from the online course content. It’s good to print some things for convenience and for backup purposes, but it’s not always useful or wise to print everything.
First, it’s good to have a portable hard drive or flash drive because it will just make your life a lot easier. The tip lists below will explain more about why.
Definitely Print:
- The class syllabus: This is almost always a good thing to print and keep in a handy place that goes with you everywhere, like a binder or folder. The syllabus usually contains a summary of all the course policies, instructor contact information, and the basic assignment details/due dates.
- Important contacts: You should always have access to the contact information for your advisor, your instructors, and administrators (the Registrar’s Office, Financial Aid, etc.).
Probably Print:
The items in this list can also be saved to a hard drive, portable hard drive, disk, or flash drive. Usually, you can save Web pages as PDFs or simply do a copy-paste into a Word document. Either way, as long as you have an accessible, digital copy that is not reliant on an internet connection, you should be in good shape.
- Details of your major course projects: Every class has a few, major projects due throughout the term. It’s good to keep track of those very closely. Midterm exams and research papers will require some long-term planning.
- Instructor tips: If your instructor takes the time to outline some success tips for the class, you might want to print or digitally save those somewhere. Professors who take the time to provide this information are basically giving you a road map to success. So it’s silly to ignore that.
- Past quizzes and exams: Part of the learning process is building upon past mistakes. If you take a quiz and get a few answers wrong, you want to be sure you go back and learn from those errors. This will help you prepare for future exams and projects. If you have a repeated weakness, this will also help you identify those patterns so you can focus on them.
