(gif via giphy)

If I remember correctly (and it was over 20 years ago now) my children were very effective at getting my attention whatever time of the day or night whenever they needed to. Certainly the first one, I don’t think I had a night’s unbroken sleep for the first year. I am reminded of this after reading through some discussion on the #BYOD4L Google + community. When you undertake asynchronous learning in an open online course you may well find that you have notifications coming at you from all over the place. You may well experience that huge wave of emotion that erupts when you are overwhelmed by demands. I see this all the time when our staff and students are added to a new online course. It results in a deluge of emails to tech support to the effect of “Please make it stop!”

So here are a few tips for managing the incoming noises from your latest baby!

• Distributed online courses which use multiple channels usually have one central hub (#BYOD4L ‘s is here) which acts as a signpost and keeps you in the loop with what is happening elsewhere. Call in whenever you want to connect with the course
• This sort of learning also aims to connect participants through social spaces such as twitter, facebook or G+. These systems may generate notifications which you can manage in the settings of your phone for the relevant app. Some prefer to see them all, for others they are unwelcome and irritating. You choose how to manage these.
• Notifications can also come in the form of emails sometimes. If you would prefer not to have any more email clutter (who needs it?) then change your delivery preferences (e.g. from wordpress you can opt for a weekly digest) or tell your email inbox to send them directly to a folder you can access when you are ready.

I hope these tips will have you taking back control (eek, did I just write that?) and feeling calm and relaxed again.