A Teacher in Training

It only takes one illness or emergency to cause you to fall behind in any type of class, but it's particularly easy to get overwhelmed by an online course since you may not even think about your responsibilities until you start your computer after a long day of work. If you notice you're lagging behind and starting to miss deadlines, take action immediately to get back on track so your efforts aren't wasted.

Reach Out for Help

Start by emailing or calling the professor in charge of the course. Even if you're not sure that you're going to turn in a specific assignment late yet or not, talking to your professor as soon as you start to struggle is the best way to get help. When it's a mental or physical illness causing you to fall behind, contact the school's admissions office to find out who's in charge of making academic adjustments for disabled students. Even if you're facing a short-term problem, you may need the administration's help to adjust your course load.

Identify Why You Fell Behind

You can't catch up until you address the original issues that caused you to drift off schedule in the first place. Are you overwhelmed or confused by the online learning portal itself? Do you have too many work or family responsibilities getting in the way? Did you take on too much of a course load assuming you could handle it? Setting aside time to train with the platform, reducing your other obligations, or even dropping a few classes could help you get on top of your workload before it's too late.

Schedule a Sane Workload

Too many students don't realize how far behind they are until they log in to read a message from their professor warning them about failing. You can't sit down and write dozens of pages of essays and participate in weeks of discussion groups all in one evening, at least not without severely limiting the quality of your work. Talk to your professor about a reasonable schedule that allows you to actually study and put effort into your course work while you slowly catch up. Offer to send the professor some of your rough drafts of your work to show your progress along the way, which also keeps you committed to staying on track.

Connect with Fellow Students

Finally, don't forget about getting help from your fellow classmates. If you're falling behind because of a genuine lack of understanding of the material, finding a peer tutor could help get back on track. Online courses usually make it easy to contact your classmates for help, but if you can't find a willing tutor, the professor should be able to connect you with someone who has time to get you back up to speed. To learn more, speak with someone like Polaris Career Center.