As we approach September and that BACK TO SCHOOL feeling kicks in, I’m working on a blog-post series and IG challenge to help you make the most of online courses you’ve bought.

I want you to know that when you enrol in any course in The KNITSONIK School, I’m deeply invested in your finishing that course and reaping the maximum benefits from what I’ve made. I build my courses really carefully and always try to include resources on how to ensure that you complete them. Loads of people do manage to finish my online courses, but some don’t. For the past week I’ve been thinking about this, and working on reminders and resources to help. So If you have bought a course online but not managed to finish (or start), this post is for you. There’s no shame or blame here: I just really want to help you meet your learning goals. The concepts shared here apply to books you bought and didn’t read, yarn and knitting kits you bought but didn’t make yet… courses you signed up to anywhere online. So even if you’re not a pupil in my KNITSONIK online school, I hope you’ll find it helpful.

Why don’t we finish things?

So many reasons! We only have so much time and attention to give to different things; there’s a lot of competition for our time and attention; and when you can do something “any time” there’s a temptation to leave it on hold indefinitely. Life can often feel overwhelming. At such times, the first things to fall off our to-do lists are the ones that feel complex, or where the reward gained for effort put in seems less immediately obvious. I get it.

Last week I asked people on instagram for other reasons you may have for not finishing online courses, and you added these ones to my list:

1. Bought on sale at a time when you were too busy to do it, but then forgetting to schedule for a future time.
2. Struggling to just sit down and watch.
3. Finding it difficult to keep an appointment with yourself and remain committed to “me-time” when at home.
4. Out of sight, out of mind: like yarn, online courses can end up in deep stash never to reach the light of day!

I think about these things a lot, as I struggle with them too. And I want to know, how can we finish things? Because I know that when I do manage to finish stuff, it helps me to feel less overwhelmed; it gives me a greater sense of intentionality and control; and my attention feels like it is mine again. There are also other gains for finding creative focus when the world feels just too much – it’s like I can hear myself again.

I’ve thought about the things that make that possible for me, and spent a couple of happy days in my studio last week drawing and painting them. I’m sharing them in hopes that they’ll be useful to you too.

1. Put it in your Diary or BuJo or Planner – or whatever you use for scheduling.

This may sound silly or obvious, but diarising online classes and making sure we have allocated time for them means they are much more likely to happen than if we just bear them vaguely in mind as something we’ll do “sometime”. I’ve often found that the first step for learning, for me, involves sitting down with a course I’ve signed up to and getting an idea of what’s involved. What is the time commitment? When can I do it? If the course doesn’t come with a breakdown of steps, can I make one, so that each bit feels actionable? “Do the course” feels overwhelming that might take many hours but “sit down and look through the course, schedule time for the modules” feels like something I can do in 25 minutes – 1 hour.

2. Make Visual Reminders.

It’s easy for an online course to stay out of mind when it’s buried deep in your email Inbox, out of sight. Knowing you have to dig around for it and log into a website somewhere usually means it will stay there. Put visual reminders where you’ll see them around your home. A note on your fridge. A note in your planner or diary on a page you use often. Post-it notes on your cupboards. A phone reminder you set for yourself; a note-to-self on your phone Lock Screen.

Bonus tip: add log-in details near your visual reminders so that when you’ve remembered to do your course, it’s easy to just get to it!

3. Make it Nice!

As someone with multiple sensory issues plus physical disabilities, the number one advantage of studying online – for me – is that I can set things up how I need them. No shit chairs! No bad smells! No lighting that gives me a headache!

What is your ideal learning environment and in what corner of your home can you set it up? Here are some ideas:

Cushions / nice chair. Make it comfy.
Your favourite tea and mug for online learning times.
Pay attention to the sounds. Do you prefer total silence or nice sounds when you’re learning? Is there a playlist of study beats or similar that would help create your ultimate learning environment? Do you live with someone noisy and need some noise-cancelling headphones to learn in comfort? Do you prefer total quiet and just the subtitles on?
Do you like nice smells? I love my wax melts and have a few that I associate with studying and setting up the perfect sensory environment.
Moisturiser / knitting / fidget toys: are you someone who needs to have something in your hands or something to do while you are sitting still? You’re at home for your online learning, so why not set this up for yourself – nobody is watching, nobody is here to judge. I never remember to moisturise my hands but sometimes when I’m watching a long online class, it’s just the soothing activity I need to enable me to sit still and watch my screen.

What do you need for you, to make it nice to sit down and watch an online class? Think in terms of your senses and your body.

The very act of anticipating and planning your comfortable learning environment helps make online learning a more real and embodied experience – something you will show up for.
When you plan your comfortable learning environment, online classes become a tangible activity to prioritise and look forward to. This is a form of preparation, just like packing your bag and looking up travel details for an IRL learning experience – it’s part of how you make that appointment with yourself and take care of the transition from “normal life at home” to “special study time”.

Bonus tip: as an extension of this, create a bookmark folder in your browser that contains your course and saved login info plus any playlists or similar helpful content. I use LifeAt.io (I just have a free account) to have the sea, or a forest, or rain or whatever on in the background if I’m in a funk and want to transport myself elsewhere for any online task and have this in a bookmark folder along with the courses I want to access.

4. Buddy up for accountability and shared experience.

This is a tip from my friend Lara, who says “love some accountability in small WhatsApp or Voxer groups” when it comes to finishing online courses.

This is such a great point. Do you have friends with whom you connect over messaging apps? Can you create a supportive group chat for sharing and cheering-on each others’ learning goals?

When Jeanette and I were working on our Knit Stars Masterclasses a few years ago, our group chat and weekly meetings were invaluable. We emboldened and encouraged one another, invested in each others’ ideas, and helped each other to overcome fears and worries. Can you reach out to your circle to find classmates and create your own virtual common room for cheerleading, encouragement and support? You can share pictures of your progress to the chat and help each other through any tricky bits. You could start by sharing what courses you’re doing and why; what your weekly goals are; what you need help with.

5. Organise your Materials.

This sounds so obvious, but when we are doing online courses at home, it can feel like “I’m just right here, all the stuff is here, no need to prepare”. In fact most online learning will need you to have materials organised and ready. When we go to school we pack our bag with our pencil case, our ruler, the textbooks we know we will need for the session and so on. It’s part of how we mentally prepare for entering a learning context.

With my KNITSONIK swatches, I learnt really quickly that the biggest barrier to progress was not having my stuff all together set up for working. I had a list – yarn, needles, graph paper, pencils, photos – and kept those things together in a basket, regularly refreshing the contents for each new swatch. Without my “schoolbag” – or in this case School Basket – I could never have finished the project.

What does your online course school bag need to have in it? Just like Make it Nice, Organise your Materials is all about removing barriers to learning and mentally preparing to begin. With your materials together, you are more ready to begin and less likely to have the frustrating experience of finally logging into your course only to discover that you need this yarn or that notebook to make an actual start. How discouraging! Encourage yourself: Organise your Materials.

6. Make Progress Visible.

When you’re reading a book or knitting a sweater, you can see your progress easily. With online learning, this is harder. Teachable courses show you the percentage of content you’ve completed so far, but pen and paper resources that you can see when you’re not on a computer can really help you have a tangible feeling of progress when you’re offline as well.

The idea of “working on my online course” can feel vague and unachievable. Conversely, finding ways to see things step by step makes online learning easier to slot into little bits of time. For example, “print out the downloads for section 1 and then allow 20 minutes to watch all the videos” feels super actionable. Colouring the squares as you go is like that book-mark moving through your book or seeing your knitting growing on your needles.

To recap: put online learning in your diary; create visual reminders around your home; prepare your materials and a nice space in which to study; buddy up with a friend for some accountability; and find ways to make your progress visible (and to celebrate it). These are things that have really helped me – I hope they’ll help you too.

If you have further suggestions for empowering actions you can take to better support your own online learning, please pop them in the comments below.
Let me know if there are other BACK TO SCHOOL topics you’d really like me to cover over the next few weeks,

YOURS IN ONLINE LEARNING,
Fx

Further Resources

For KNITSONIK Bullet Journaling I created a Course Progress Tracker page for students, to enable them to see and celebrate their progress on the course where it matters most: in your Bullet Journal.

Because so many of you found this helpful, for Colour at Play I created a colour-as-you-go overview of the course and a module all about scheduling.

If you’ve found these ideas helpful and want video content that speaks to the two points about about scheduling time for online learning and making progress visible, from now until Septembember 1st, I have made the sections in KNITSONIK Bullet Journaling that deal with those two specific things available to view as previews, free of charge.

Do those lessons here: https://knitsonik.teachable.com/courses/knitsonik-bullet-journaling111/lectures/27637952
And here: https://knitsonik.teachable.com/courses/knitsonik-bullet-journaling111/lectures/27637953

You can view all the content relating to scheduling course progress and making progress visible in Colour at Play in the course preview section which anyone can watch right here: https://knitsonik.teachable.com/courses/colour-at-play1/lectures/51872649

Additionally, on the suggestion of one of my KNITSONIK School Pupils, I have created a bundle in which you can save £33 (more with your 10% off KNITSONIK Mailing List Subscriber Discount) when you buy three courses at once. See the bundle and read about it here.