Correspondence Courses: Maintaining Discipline

It is common knowledge amongst those who take correspondence courses that maintaining discipline is often the hardest part. Resources, wiki’s and interaction with students and teachers all provide the resources necessary to succeed, but only if we can find the motivation to get online and active within our correspondence courses.

One way to understand how we are motivated is through Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. A hierarchy that just about every student undertaking an undergraduate degree will be familiar with. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs helps us to understand what we need to accomplish in terms of our needs before we have the energy and resources to undertake higher levels of involvement, including correspondence course work.

Maslow’s five hierarchical categories of need, from the highest point on the hierarchy to the lowest are; self actualization (creativity, authenticity), esteem (self), social (love and belonging), safety (security, emotional and physical) and survival (physiological needs), with the latter need being the most basic and self actualization being the most sophisticated.

Physiological need is of course the fulfillment of our basic body requirements such as food and sleep. These base needs require fulfillment before we consider the fulfillment of the next layer of needs, which on Maslow’s scale is safety, and then love and belonging and so forth. The most sophisticated, and the peak on Maslow’s scale, is self actualization. This represents need which can be considered imperative only to individual growth and this level of need is not required to maintain physical and psychological function whereas all other categories, to an extent, are essential needs. This pinnacle level of need can be seen as self enlightenment, attainable only after all other needs have been met.

If we apply this thinking to motivating ourselves in our correspondence courses then we begin to understand that before we have the internal and external resources to motivate us to do our correspondence course work we must have a gambit of other needs met. That isn’t to say we all need self actualization before we can start our correspondence course work but it does suggest that we must know that our basic physical, emotional and family needs are met first. Organizing these before undertaking correspondence courses will mean we have systems in place to ensure our motivation isn’t stymied by unmet needs.

Once your needs are met and you are ready to roll here are a few suggestions for staying motivated in your correspondence courses:

• Be curious, really get interested in the subject you’re studying

Delving deeper than the superficial is bound to illuminate fascinating insights into the topic of your correspondence course.

• Set a schedule and study at the right time

Make a set time correspondence course time and make it the quietest time in the house or a good time to go to a café or the library.

• Set Goals

Most correspondence courses have a set course outline as well as pre-defined requirements for contributing to group discussions and answering questions. You will also know well in advance of any assignments or papers due. Use these criteria to establish exactly how much time you will need based on the correspondence course workload and the number of days you have available for correspondence course work.

• Remove distractions from your surroundings

Wherever you intend to study make sure you won’t be interrupted or regularly distracted. Correspondence courses require focus and so does decent research.

• Reward yourself

Treat yourself for the correspondence course goals you are able to achieve. Make it weekly so that you get a regular pat on the back. Of course your motivation and dedication will also be reflected in the ultimate correspondence course reward of an excellent grade.