(Picture 1. https://leverageedu.com/blog/online-learning/)

Last class, Valerie gave a great introduction to open our view about online classes. Before COVID-19 happened, I experienced taking online classes only once in my entire life. It was a recorded video of this professor giving lessons about philosophy class which was mandatory for the entire university students. The video seemed to be recorded a long time ago. It had bad lighting, old quality, and most importantly the boring atmosphere of the lecture. There are several reasons why a student found this class dull and annoying.

First, there was no connection between the teacher and the student. The teacher was just there to read the PowerPoint slides out loud and give 1 sentence additional information sometimes. There was no point in listening to this class if only they were giving out the PowerPoint slides. They kind of forced students to take this class because the test coverages are covered in the video and have to listen to the lecture within a week or else, we will be marked incomplete for that week. Teacher reading in front of student (it was done in class) might be helpful for auditory learners to listen while the teacher reads the mood of the class and throw out some critical thinking questions in the middle. However, because of the limitation of recorded online classes which is the impossibility of communication during the lecture, the classes were commented poorly.

On the other hand, there are positive traits of online classes as well. Especially in a situation like right now with the COVID, students are able to take classes safely at home. For me, it might have been a huge risk to take a plane back to Victoria, to find a place to quarantine for 2 weeks, to search for a house to live in, and to go to classes every day by taking public transportation. With this high technological and efficient system, I can live on the opposite side of the globe and take courses in my comfort and safety. Also, I get to talk to my professors and classmates easily. By just simply creating a meeting on Zoom and set a time, we don’t have to go anywhere but meet up together. I think even after the situation gets better because people are now got introduced to this revolutionary system, lots of meetings can be done online more often. One thing mentioned in class that I liked was that we can invite guest speakers easily. Even though they are living 10 hours, 20 hours away, we can still see their faces and hear from them directly. This is very efficient for our future education. Lastly, I get to know the full name of my classmates. Based on my experience, I tend to miss opportunities to talk to my classmates especially if it is a big class with more than 50 students. However, with zoom’s provision of names on the screen, I get to be familiar with my classmates’ faces and names. I like this part a lot. 😀

Online communications are still new and fresh to people. COVID sort of brought enforcement to the implication in our life yet we are slowly adjusting to it. It opened the possibility of a bigger world of education. Rather than the classic, out-of-date style of teaching, now we can bring more sources to the classroom such as guest speakers, sharing the location (in biology, the teacher can visit a certain mountain to show trees and plants for students), or even have an easier 1-on-1 conversation with individual students. Online usage may still be controversial but we can get benefits from it too!