This school year has been a particularly turbulent one, no matter how old your kids may be.
Confusion over how long schools will be reopened, difficulties adapting to virtual/distance learning, and the feeling of uncertainty we all have has come together to make 2020 a difficult year for students of any age.
College students have had a tougher time than many. With a lot of schools still unclear as to whether or not students will be required to attend classes in person, and a lot of students who were prepared to travel to college are suddenly readjusting to life at home.
Suddenly being homeschooled has been a difficult transition for many students, but it can be particularly tough on college-aged students who were planning on being away from home, and may not have a lot of space in your house to be by themselves anymore. A good way to help combat the anxiety that can come with this would be to create a specialized study area for your newly home-schooled college students. This can help them focus and concentrate on the work at hand, especially while adjusting to distance learning, and can help them feel a bit more involved in the whole process.
Study Areas for Distance Learning College Students
Pick a space and stick with it
Hopefully, after your student got the word they won’t be attending class in person this year, they still have a room to return to, even if it’s been a little cleaned out in the meantime. Take their bedroom, an unused guest room, or even a special room in the basement and designate it as your student’s study area for the rest of the school year.
…and declutter it
Of course, having the room is only half the battle. Help your student declutter the area to help them focus on the task at hand; if there’s already a desk let them totally clean it off and start over, and try to avoid keeping things like non-study devices (TVs, video games, etc) and other potential distractions around.
Find out what they’ll need to succeed
If you already went out to purchase some dorm storage for your student, now might be a good time to repurpose it for home use. Talk to your students to understand their current classload and the materials they need, and add storage for it wherever you can. Use bookshelves to hang onto textbooks until they’re needed, use desk organizers to help keep things like notebooks and laptop chargers close at hand, and if they need a bigger home office desk to work from, this can help a lot in the long run.
Recreate the environment they’re used to
This will be a bit more subjective, but a number of studies have shown that it’s easier to retain and recall information in a similar environment to which you learned it. To that end, try to help your student recreate the sort of environments they used to learn and live in back when they were attending school on-campus. If their classroom had a certain layout, or if they were used to a certain temperature or scent, try to recreate that as best as you can.
Let them focus
Finally, few things get in the way of successful learning more than distractions. Learn your student’s schedule and try to help them work within it – try to avoid making a ton of noise during their online lectures, see what you can do to help schedule a lunch or dinner break for them, and try to not let the younger siblings barge in on them too many times while they’re studying. (This one can be easier said than done, of course.)
