The Warwick Online Learning Certificate (WOLC) has been developed to give all first-year undergraduate students the skills and confidence to be effective online learners. It's the ideal preparation for moving into the next year of your degree studies.

Hear from Biological Sciences student Phoebe, who completed the Certificate in May.

Did you enjoy the Warwick Online Learning Certificate?

I found the course enjoyable and interesting. For me, I think my favourite aspects of the course were learning time management techniques and career planning. I think the prospect of beginning to plan your future career path can be overwhelming and I didn’t know where to start, but the Warwick Online Learning Certificate informed me on what resources were available and had lots of useful activities to get me started.

I was also glad to have something more ‘normal’ to do during lockdown and something to focus on.

How did you approach the course?

I approached WOLC as if it was a normal module on my course. I spent about an hour a day working through the activities, but I think what's great about the Warwick Online Learning Certificate is that you can go into as much detail with the activities as you like, which makes the time you spend working through the course quite customisable.

I was a bit apprehensive about working in a virtual group because this is something new I haven’t really done before, but I soon found that the other students in my virtual group were friendly and willing to have a conversation. Our online tutor also helped in generating discussions, so it worked really well.

I only did a small amount every day so I would say it took me about 3 weeks, but it could definitely be done a lot quicker than that if you’re willing to put more hours into it each day. I would recommend completing one unit at a time in the order they are presented as some of the units have connections to previous units so it's useful to have completed the work already.

What are the benefits of the course?

You will learn more than you think. Even if you feel you are quite good with a computer and working online, there is definitely new and valuable information on this course for everyone. Not only does this course give you information about online tools you may not know existed, but it also gives you detailed ideas on how you can begin to reflect on yourself, your skills, and your flaws. It will help you figure out what you can do to improve your Warwick core skills and play to your strengths. I'll also be able to use what I've have learnt going into second year; I'll be creating a detailed career plan and will be undertaking many opportunities to help improve my core skills.