With the growing educational technology, online teaching platforms are increasing at a much faster rate. Though online courses offer several benefits to learners, chances of learner burnout are also there. A state of physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion or fatigue can be termed burnout. Many online learners feel less motivated, develop a sense of isolation, and have poor self-paced learning experiences. Let us discuss how online learners can overcome these burnout issues.
What is learner burnout?
Vast curriculum, lack of academic understanding, poor interpersonal skills, high academic demands, assessment pressure, obligations, low level of motivation, and some other factors together cause learner burnout. With students of all age groups, from school going to higher education, facing academic burnout is common. While picking up online courses too, some students face these issues. Let us discuss a complete set of effective tips and tricks that online learners can follow in this regard. But before that let us discuss some points that show us signs of burnout in students.
- Exhaustion
- Lack of motivation to study and complete the work.
- Anxiety and stress.
- Less interest and more boredom in learning and studying material.
- Not meeting the work deadlines.
- Lack of confidence.
- Downfall in academic results.
- Lack of inspiration and creativity.
What can students do?
1. Set goals: for preventing online learning burnout, setting goals is very important. Make sure that your goals and learning objectives are achievable. Long-term goals can be challenging and can cause burnout too. To overcome this issue, divide your big-term goals into short ones. Short-term goals are easy to achieve and keep students motivated and enthusiastic throughout.
2. Make a schedule: another method to prevent online learning burnout is making a schedule. A timetable keeps your day systematic and more productive. Along with studies and online classes, make sure to have time for self-care and breaks too. This will help you not to face physical and mental exhaustion. You will stay more energetic and motivated every day.
3. Connect with others: emotional and social barriers can also cause burnout. To overcome these issues, you must try to connect with your fellow online learners. With the use of social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and more, forming connections with others has become much easier and more effective. So try to make a social circle, and share opinions, ideas, and problems together. Share feedback and solutions to avoid online learning burnout.
How can online teachers help students?
1. Use multimedia
For effective online course selling, and preventing learner burnout, using multimedia is helpful. Listening to the teachers reading out the textbook material in online classes can be very boring. They might lose interest and attention both. However, today’s learners are highly attracted to technology, and using the same for overcoming academic burnout is helpful.
Teachers can develop effective online study material including audio-visual tools like educational videos, modules, demonstrations, picture cards, and more. With the help of visualization, students tend to understand the concepts better and more quickly and stay engaged too.
2. Ensure active learning practices
Listening to video lectures all the time can make students feel bored and exhausted too. To avoid learner burnout and keep them active, ensuring active learning practices is very important. Along with researching the platforms to create and sell online courses, plan for active learning practices like online quizzes, puzzles, riddles, case studies, and more. This improves students’ logical and critical thinking skills and also makes them competitive.
3. Keep sharing feedback with students
Last but not the least, to overcome online learners’ burnout, sharing feedback is very helpful. When teachers appreciate students for their performance, they feel positive and motivated. The suggestions and advice received make students feel valued and taken care of. They feel connected with the teachers. Other than sharing feedback, taking it from students is also beneficial. To make them active, interested, and develop a sense of online community, seek reviews from students about online classes, how effective they are in finding the current teaching practices, and more.
Conclusion
With academic pressure, friends, family, personal stress, lack of motivation, and more, many online learners face burnout. By following the above-mentioned tips students can overcome this issue. We also discussed a few steps like using multimedia, feedback exchange, and active learning, that online educators can follow to help students avoid burnout.
