While students today have become well-adapted to virtual learning environments and platforms, this comfort in the digital realm often has not extended to their organizational methods.For the most part, students were accustomed to using Google Classroom or similar platforms to submit assignments, but had never developed their own system for maintaining and referring to their own files, or for keeping track of tasks and deadlines.
Organizing Files
We walked students through creating a file tree of semesters containing folders for each class, which in turn contained folders by week or unit. We encouraged them to color-code their folders, add their course syllabus from each class to the correct folder, and even to consider keeping their class notes there as well — either by scanning handwritten notes, or taking notes digitally. While students can usually find any documents they receive from their professors on Canvas or Blackboard, it can simplify their process if they have downloaded and saved each document to one central location.
Managing Time
Almost all of our students exclusively used paper planners or to-do lists in high school, if they even used a system at all. Several students reported that in high school, they were just able to keep track of their assignments and deadlines mentally, without having to write anything down. In college, however, there are simply too many tasks and deadlines to remember them all — and even writing every assignment down in a paper planner may not be sufficient.
Today, the best way for students to keep track of everything they need to do is through the calendar, reminders, and alarm apps on their phones. In one of our earliest meetings with students, we had them add each of their courses to their phone calendar and set them to repeat as needed. We also gave each student a list of the most important semester dates and deadlines they should look up and add to their calendar.
Once students received their syllabus in each course, we also had students add each exam date and major assignment deadline to their calendars. Of course, some professors do not provide all of these dates at the very beginning of the semester, and some only provide them tentatively, subject to change. In these cases, we would have students reach out to their professors for the first important deadline in the course, so that they could have a timeframe for that.
Finally, we had each student pick a day and time each week when they would preview the upcoming week’s assignments, tasks, and deadlines. We encourage our students to add their tasks to their calendars as well, which enables them to visualize how long different tasks will take and when they have room in their schedules to accomplish them — and it also creates a reminder to actually do the task when the time comes.
Of course, some students will have systems and routines that worked for them in high school and that they wish to continue using — like having a whiteboard calendar at their desk, and keeping a paper planner with them to jot things down. If this works for a student, we want them to keep at it! But we have found that many students find paper planners and physical calendars lacking when it comes to juggling all the demands and deadlines of college life.