Top Apps That Will Transform Your Study From Home Experience
Remote learning has changed the game for professionals looking to either expand or specialize further in their fields. Working career people often forwent furthering their academic and formal qualifications because it means they would have to take time out from their career.
Today you no longer need to make that distinction. Instead, you can continue to work while progressing through a remote degree that covers everything you need right at home.
To help you reach those deadlines, stay productive when learning and studying, and of course, committed to your study routine, use these applications.
Online programs
Online providers educate through a mix of mediums. They use podcasts, vodcasts, online interactive activities and quizzes, readings, and live discussions in order to best translate the learning environment to the digital world.
Though the infrastructure has improved drastically in just a few years, there are still some tools and tech that you will want to invest in for your own comfort. Earning a master’s or even something as laudable as Aston University’s online DBA can be daunting and even difficult. These are long-term commitments that don’t simply hold your hand through the process.
That DBA, for example, teaches qualitative/quantitative research methods and business research strategies, but other than that, you are primarily the driving force of your education. You are paired with one or more supervisors, yes, but you are the one who defines your thesis topic, you are the one that identifies the scope, and you the one that works to finish it. This is a lot of work that you need to be consistent with in order to reach the deadlines. This comprehensive comparison of Thinkific Vs. Podia can help you choose the best course creator app.
Cloud-Based Note Applications
Any note-taking application you use must be cloud-enabled and have a sync set-up. You should be able to take notes on the go, on your laptop, on your home computer, and anywhere else and automatically have it all synced up. One of the most popular tools that offer both robust multimedia note-taking and cloud syncing is OneNote, which is a free desktop and mobile application that is available across devices.
A great new feature that was recently added was the ability to create collaborative notes, which is set to truly revolutionize the study from home experience. Now you can get in touch with your peers and work collaboratively to create in-depth notes instead of manually reading and typing up notes individually.
Though small, this is just one easy way that you can enjoy a more social learning environment, even from home.
Stay Focused! Extensions that Can Help
If you find it difficult to stay focused and that you end up continuously going to social media apps or web pages, then there are a few tools that can help. Focus extensions essentially work to block your access to these pages for a selected period of time.
Of course, if you find your attention drifting, the best thing that you can do is take a short break. Leave your desk, refuel with a healthy snack and a drink, and even spend a few minutes outside if you can to get some fresh air. This will help give your brain that break it is craving but not found when you visit distracting sights.
Difficulty Keeping a Schedule? Apps that Can Help
When you try to tackle a degree around your career, your schedule and list of deadlines is going to compound. This is particularly true for those who are in a doctorate program. There will be few formal deadlines, meaning that most of the deadlines and goals you set are done by yourself. Being able to stay on top of it all can be difficult if you cannot see everything that you need to do in one easy place.
Unless you have a day planner and are loyal to that medium, it is time to upgrade. There are many great scheduling tools and even options that are designed with students in mind to help them keep track of all their commitments in one place.
Get More Out of the Text You Read
We are far beyond the ability of programs to simply find, recognize, and enrich text from images. Today applications can actually work to help you summarize faster. Programs like LiquidText works to not only enrich text so that you can highlight, copy, and edit PDFs and JEPGs it also works to summarize information that you have highlighted so that you can take the summary and paste it directly into your notes with minimal changes.
Keep Your References Managed
Every degree requires sources, and if you are someone who isn’t naturally organized, you may find yourself losing the exact references to the information in your notes fast. The best way to avoid this is to use a reference manager. Not only can you save all the references automatically, but these managers can take minutes and even hours out of formatting and creating your reference list later on. Reference managers can even be a great place to keep track of notes, depending on what features the program includes.
Text-to-Voice for On-The-Go Learning
While there are professional text-to-voice tools, you may be interested in most tools today that allow you to easily use this feature right from the page. On Mac products, for example, all you need to do is select the text you want to be spoken aloud. Right-click this selection, then select “Speech” > “Start Speech,” and you will be ready to listen instead of actively reading the text.
If you find active reading and learning difficult after a long day, then this method can help immensely. Rather than try to sit still, however, be active. Listen and learn while you are on your commute or doing chores to free up spare time and, for many, actually improve your ability to absorb the information.
If you find that the built-in tools are a bit jarring or hard to understand, then try one of the professional alternatives that tend to have a more natural diction and tone.
