Back to College, But Do You Need Back to School Supplies?

Store aisles are overflowing with school supplies and back to school sales. You may be checking off long lists of must-haves for your children in elementary and high school classes. Even preschools are sending home hefty requirements of paint brushes, playdough Ziplock baggies. But when you head back to class, online, do you need to have a stack of freshly pressed notebooks and red pens at your side

No.

Your only must have is your computer and an internet connection. Brook Urban, Bryant & Stratton Academic Advisor, said students do 100 percent of their work online. “Their papers are submitted online, the quizzes are completed online, even the portfolio they create will be completed online,” she said. Which means your number one school supply is your computer and an internet connection. Students in the public speaking class will need to make sure their computer contains a camera since they will need to record themselves giving a speech. All students are given a list of hardware and software requirements when they submit their application, but in case you missed it, here it is again.

Perhaps the most important thing you can have at the ready as an online student is a technology contingency plan. Storms knock out internet. Computers crash. Toddlers poor juice all over keyboards. It happens. And unfortunately, deadlines keep rolling.

“Having a backup plan is essential for success,” Urban said. “We advise our students to have at least one, at best two back up plans, whether that is a local library, or a friend or family member’s computer. This will also eliminate a lot of stress for the students.”

And just because your professor didn’t send you a tidy list of school supplies doesn’t mean you can’t use them. Urban stresses that students need to understand how they learn best. If that means taking notes on actual paper, making flashcards or highlighting passages in books, go for it!

“Do they need to print out their lecture and highlight portions for better understanding, or do they need to take notes, or record themselves reading the lectures? It is basically the student’s preference for how they learn if they need additional supplies.”