Learning Online at ASU

How do ASU students learn online? What does the “classroom” look like? How are courses structured?

Take a tour of LearningStudio below, where you’ll get a sneak peek of how you access course content, interact with professors and turn in assignments.

Succeeding in your online degree program means being organized and resource-aware. ASU students have free access to all of the “products” courses may use, so become familiar with the options and comfortable using the variety of tools available.

Planning & Organization

ASU was one of the first universities to partner with Google to offer students their Apps for Education. Because it’s important to keep university deadlines and course due dates handy, you can access Google’s Calendar directly from your My ASU page.

Document Management & Collaboration

You have several options as an ASU student for creating documents, presentations or spreadsheets. Microsoft Office, iWork, PDF readers and more are all available to use at no cost here. Many students take advantage of Google Docs, which in addition to allowing you to save your work “in the cloud,” making it accessible from any Internet-connected device, also offers a sharing feature. Real-time and asynchronous collaboration with classmates via Google Docs can be valuable when collaborating online means managing classmates’ busy schedules, and sometimes different time zones. Learn more about Google’s collaboration features here.

Multimedia

While many classes embed videos inside courses, we recommend that you have at least one video player on your computer. Windows Media Player is the second most-used video player online; download it for free here. Quicktime is Apple’s free video player, available here.

Time Expectations

For a 7.5 week session, a student should be prepared to spend 6 hours a week on coursework for every 1 course credit.

The following table displays the number of course credits for a single 7.5 week session course, and the corresponding number of hours expected to be spent on coursework:

# of Course Credits	# of Expected Coursework Hours per Week
3	18
4	24

So if a student is signed up for 2 or 3 courses during a 7.5 week session, and each course is worth 3 credits, then they should expect to spend anywhere between 36 to 54 hours a week on coursework.

ASU’s online orientation walks you through the student experience in short videos. “What To Expect” talks more about scheduling your time, and the amazing community that students are a part of—watch it here.