Virtual Classes Survival Guide—Blog - Acts Two Fellowship — Christian Fellowship at UC Berkeley | Christian Fellowship on the UC Berkeley Campus | Student Club Group at Berkeley | Acts Two Fellowship — Christian Fellowship at UC Berkeley (a2f)

Starting at college is an exciting experience, but it’s also a little intimidating — and all the more so now, with classes online and no one quite sure how it all works. This blog post, based on a talk recently given at a Virtually Berkeley study lounge by Jonathan and Jeanine, two seniors in a2f, aims to help make that experience a little easier to navigate.

Virtual Learning

One of the most helpful strategies is to maintain a routine as if you were at school in-person. This helps immensely with staying on track with your learning. Going to lectures live might not be necessary, but making that a habit is key. Waiting to watch the recordings is already procrastinating, and will only lead to more. If your lectures are asynchronous because of time zone differences, you can schedule a time in your calendar that you will watch it consistently. Believe me — if you get behind in lectures, it can easily snowball and be hard to catch up!

For studying, it’s important to eliminate distractions. Start by keeping a distinction between study space and leisure space: make sure you separate where you work and where you relax because it will help you be more productive. Make sure your study space is free from things that will distract you, like a guitar, video games, or any of your own favorite hobbies. Populate it instead with things that help you focus: textbooks, notebooks, planners, a candle (if you’re into that sort of thing). Also, make sure you have a good, comfortable pair of headphones or earbuds to play your focused study music.

Something that always helps with studying is to connect with others, rather than doing it in an isolated environment. If you’re at home, forming study groups over Zoom with your friends and classmates can help a lot. Our own Virtually Berkeley program is having weekly study groups every Thursday, which aim to provide the same experience.

When you’re studying, remember to take breaks and go outside! Make sure you have breaks from screen time. After a lecture, just take 5 mins to look at something other than your computer or phone screen. Go for a walk, watch the sunset, and just make sure you’re still exercising and staying physically healthy.

A final tip for virtual learning: dress for the day! Sometimes it’s really nice to be able to go to school in your pajamas; but dressing up like you normally would for a day of class will help a lot with sticking to a productive routine.

Online Classes

In online class, it helps to leave your camera on! This is especially true in discussion section. Often discussion will happen in smaller breakout rooms, which is a great way to connect with your classmates, which helps everyone learn more effectively. But if most people have their cameras off, so that no one can even tell if they’re there or paying attention, that experience is ruined. You want to have a good time in class — and the fun of learning comes from being able to interact with people. It’s also nice to the instructors, who’d otherwise be staring at a black wall of names. Nod and react to the lecture as you normally would for an in-person class.

It also helps to make a real effort to ensure you’re participating. It can be intimidating for everyone to be in a Zoom call together; participation certainly doesn’t come as naturally as it does in an in-person setting (and even there it can be hard). But you get so much more out of a class when you participate! It’s scary to think that you might, say, get a question wrong — but once you do, there’s no more pretenses and you’re probably helping out other students by creating a space where it’s okay to not know everything.

Don’t be afraid to ask for help! Working with others on problem sets helps to make sure you aren’t missing anything important. Going to professors’ or GSIs’ office hours is a great way to get help — or send emails! They’re there to help, and (on the whole) don’t mind clarifying things for you. It helps to ask early on: don’t wait until a day before the midterm to get clarification, when office hours will also be packed. Also, feel free to ask upperclassmen for help — including any of the older ones at a2f!

Time Management

If you don’t have one already, Google Calendar is a very helpful time-management system. It’s free and widely used, and it’s already integrated into your Berkeley account, making it easier a great way to organize your social and academic life. With whatever calendar you use, it helps to add in your class schedule: lectures, discussions, and office hours, as well as when assignments are due, and your exam dates!

Creating study blocks and adding them to your calendar is helpful. These are dedicated chunks of time in your day where you will be studying and doing homework. Setting that clear expectation helps to stay on track. But you can’t be studying all the time! You can also schedule in leisure blocks. It’s the same idea, but this is a time to focus on things outside of school. It could be calling a friend, playing an instrument, reading a book, watching a movie, and so on.

One helpful tip is to install Zoom for GSuite. It’s a Chrome extension that integrates Zoom with your Google Calendar. You can easily add a Zoom link when you create events. A final way to use your calendar is to get accountability: share it with your friends. This is simple in Google Calendar (“Settings” > “Settings for my calendars” > “Share with specific people” > “Add people”). It’s really helpful if you’d like someone to help you with going to bed or waking up on time, studying, exercising, or similar goals. It’s also really helpful if you want to schedule a call to catch up.

Resources

Finally, here are some helpful resources for your Cal studies. Library genesis has a database of textbook pdfs. You can get textbook pdfs for free here, although it might not have the latest editions. Tau Beta Pi has a test bank of past exams. These are essential for doing well on the actual exams, to help you get used to the time limit and test format. Berkeleytime gives historical GPA data for each class, which is great for getting an idea of future semester workload; and it tracks class enrollment over time, so you can see which classes you need to prioritize with your earlier enrollment appointments.

The official Berkeley schedule of classes is also essential for getting up-to-date enrollment capacity information. Your specific department’s website will have a major requirements checklist, which is helpful for creating a 4-year plan. You can use this to help plan out electives, some of which are only offered in certain semesters (Berkeleytime can help you determine the pattern). Finally, CalLink is the go-to resource for information about campus groups and their events.

That’s it — congratulations again to the class of 2024 (and the transfer class of 2022) for starting at Cal! Stay tuned for more helpful study tips on this blog and on our a2f YouTube channel, and go here to see what we offer for incoming students!