Time Tracking Software: The Learning Solution You Should Know About
It comes as no surprise that the global landscape has greatly changed.
It happened due to:
- the increased mobility of the middle class
- continuously evolving new technologies
The latter contributed to two major shifts:
- information became easily accessible
- the information, being the basis of knowledge, facilitated the progressive expansion of access to education, which, in its turn, launched lots of trends.
The emergence of online learning is, without a doubt, the most noticeable education trend on the rise.
Another trend worth mentioning is the involvement of unprecedented numbers of students in the learning process. According to 2017 MOOCs statistics, Coursera has 30 million registered users and offers 2,700 courses that cover Humanities, Technology, Business, Education and Training, Art and Design, Engineering, Health and Medicine, and Mathematics.
The effective operation of new complex education systems that determines the successful learners’ performance is possible through applying innovative technology products.
Time tracking as the essential component of learning management is one of the ways to find the optimal solution for lots of productivity issues, as it is putting the data-driven approach into practice.
Benefits Of Time Tracking Software
Time monitoring and time recording belong to the traditional techniques of forecasting the learning outcome and analyzing the academic results. But the application of time tracking software in teaching and studying enables a shift to a whole new level of the learning experience.
In particular, for a better teacher performance and more effective student-teacher interaction, time tracking software is an invaluable tool, as it provides for:
- predicting the time consumption for certain types of activities
- comparing with the actual results
- better planning
- assessing the progress
- working with a big number of students
- ensuring the safety of all the results when working remotely
- collecting the data for scientific research purposes
- boosting learners’ productivity (visual timeline of activity will help identify the productivity drops and peaks for the insightful view)
- boosting teachers’ productivity (time tracking gives the instant feedback on the results and expectations within the learning process)
Students can be encouraged to use time tracking software to monitor their progress when preparing for the timed tests/exams.
Numerous essays, research articles, reviews, peer assessment, presentations are a small portion of the homework assignments students have to get ready for. The diversity of tasks and the traditionally busy schedule require that students should not fall behind and keep track of deadlines. Time tracking software is efficacious for meeting these requirements.
Lots of simple but effective time trackers (for instance, Everhour, TMetric, Clockify) offer lots of options beyond the primary function of digital timers.
With time trackers adapted to learners’ needs, students get easy integration with project and task planning apps (Asana, Trello, Doit.im, Wrike, Wunderlist, etc), which gives a better view of the project time. They can identify problems and bottlenecks by looking at the time tracking reports. Time trackers can also generate project summaries and reports on apps usage on a daily/weekly basis, which will help learners gain insight into:
- what distracts them
- what makes them more productive
- what time they demonstrate the productivity peak
- what time their productivity drops
The central challenge in managing online education is measuring learners’ engagement. Under the conditions of classroom interaction, teachers apply time tracking as a non-obligatory method because they can have instant feedback by observing the learners’ response. In the online environment, time tracking seems mandatory as it is the only effective mechanism of ensuring the positive feedback.
Time tracking in learning can also considerably decrease the pressure of the exam countdown. Time trackers developers placed enhanced emphasis on the accuracy of calculations and invisibility of the tool itself (installed as a browser extension, it will work in the background) so that students could concentrate on the research instead of taking extra efforts on watching the time usage.
Knowing the time allocation for certain tasks not only helps organize studies in a more productive way but also:
- strengthens the analytical thinking skills
- eliminates junk habits
- helps keep the work-life balance in check
- prioritizes goals
- improves planning
- identifies distractions
- beats procrastination
Through time tracking, learners get the real picture of time utilization: if they can spot and name the distractions or other productivity killers, getting rid of them will be easy.
To Sum Up
Time trackers belong to the ‘right learning tools’, as they give both students and teachers an opportunity to navigate among lots of options. Besides monitoring the learning process in terms of compliance to the syllabus and schedule, time trackers greatly facilitate the control of attendance, give the in-depth view to the engagement into learning activities, optimize the time allocation, identify the reasons behind the productivity pitfalls, and help track students’ progress.
