Blog: Perspectives of Online Learning
Today is the final day of international Open Education Week, and the communications team wanted to offer an interesting Friday read to close out the week. We invited a US-based student and an Egypt-based faculty member to provide their perspectives on the dramatic shift into online learning stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic. We chose this topic because many educators and learners in the open education field continue to adapt to the changes, and we hoped that these perspectives below could shed some light on how others are doing.
Faculty Perspective
By Kim Fox [@KimFoxWOSU], a professor of practice at The American University in Cairo.
Laptop? Check. Internet access? Check. Planning … confidence … resources? Check. These were ideal starting points for the swift pivot to emergency remote teaching in March of 2020 when the global coronavirus pandemic was declared.My teaching in the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication prepared me well for the online teaching and learning environment. We have a lot of digital tools to demonstrate to students the content creation process. I took comfort in the ease of the transition, at least from the course design perspective plus, I had a teaching assistant.
For example, I teach audio production and we retained most of the assignments for the course including the final project: produce an audio feature involving organic storytelling, interviews, research, music and natural sounds. The challenge was how to obtain good quality audio. I mostly encouraged students to pitch ideas involving family members and/or people who were in their bubble. Then we discussed ways to create a space in their home, usually a bedroom, to record their narration; most recorded their narration on their mobile phone. They completed the editing using audio editing software, which is what they would have done in a face-to-face setting.
Some students didn’t have an audio editing software program, so we either obtained remote access using the university’s labs, students purchased the software or they downloaded Audacity, an open source software. In the end and with patience and empathy from all constituents, students produced decent quality audio work. The audio narratives were particularly strong. This was due in part to a lot of one-on-one conferences via phone and Zoom to help mold the stories.
By the time of the fall 2020 semester, when it was announced that we would be remote again, we all had the hang of teaching and learning online. By working in small groups, providing frequent feedback and scaffolding the audio production process, the students were empowered to create quality audio content often using Zoom to record their audio components.
All in all, the students' audio work was better than good and some were submitted to international audio competitions. We are currently waiting to know if any winners are from last year’s cohort; it would certainly be an achievement to celebrate in these challenging times.
Student Perspective
By Luke Mowery, a first year undergraduate student in Engineering at Clemson University, in South Carolina, United States.
Learning online during the COVID-19 pandemic has been an interesting experience to say the least. I did not realize how much harder it was to get adjusted to college as a freshman. Going to college your freshman year is hard at any time. Making new friends, finding your classes, getting used to the workload and becoming accustomed to being away from home for longer periods of time can really test your patience and resolve. However, to do it during a global pandemic where orientation, campus tours, homework and most classes and tutoring sessions are online and everyone is stuck in their dorms adds more stress, anxiety, confusion and creates more situations of uncertainty.
One of the biggest challenges that I’ve faced is realizing how much being able to talk to your classmates and teachers in person has been taken for granted. The ability to not only socialize but to be able to talk out class problems and solutions face-to-face is valued much more nowadays than if we had not gone online. An ironic, and maybe one positive, outcome of the pandemic is that we have grown to appreciate and yearn for those things that we overlooked and took for granted before.
Clemson University has done a great job at helping students through the pandemic. One of the biggest benefits, at least for me, is how efficient the university is with COVID-19 testing, mandating COVID-19 preventative measures, quarantining students and faculty right away if someone tests positive and making sure that questions that the students have can be answered with an abundance of information. Because of all of this, the rate of students testing positive is now extremely low. According to University data the past two months have seen only 1.3% of COVID-19 tests return positive out of 150,000 tests given. The outcome of this is that we are now allowed to have the option for full in person classes, while still observing all COVID-19 protocols. Being able to be back in person, for most classes, has definitely helped me learn and to do better.
One thing that I think could be improved is now that a lot of classes are in person, the University should start offering more in-person tutoring, counseling help, and opportunities for students to meet their professors in-person. While a lot of classes are now full or semi in-person, not all of them are. Since most help is online only, some students may feel nervous, scared, or unsure about where to go. Having an in-person, face-to-face option may benefit them more. It takes time, but if you reach out to your professors, fellow students, counselors, and advisors, they are more than willing to help you and your time at college will become a lot more enjoyable.