by Lexey Burns, Editor-in-Chief
First, there’s a difference between online learning and remote delivery.
Online learning is a regular class that you would have taken online asynchronously, where students are given guidelines and are required to teach themselves the material. Remote delivery is either synchronous or asynchronous, but there are still lectures provided similar to an in-person class, just with the health of students and teachers as their number one priority. Remote delivery is as close to an in-person class that most students can get during the pandemic right now.
Many students were not happy with the announcement on remote delivery continuing into the Winter semester at Laurentian, myself being one of them. These zoom lectures feel optional (especially the ones at 8:30) and with multiple different online platforms being used, it’s hard to stay on track with approximately four to six classes.
It seems for a lot of students, due to the switch of course delivery, they are burdened with more work than in past years. With this heavy amount of work, it’s difficult to dedicate an equal amount of time to all the assignments, tests, and exams, while still attending zoom classes.
Shyanne Stewart, a fourth-year Concurrent Education said, “personally, I’ve seen a drop in my grades due to the fact that the assignment structures are not clear, so when the professors are marking us students are losing marks due to them not being clear.”
It is also tough to maintain a feasible level of communication with professors and classmates through zoom lectures, online office hours, and emails. It’s even harder without being able to ask the person beside you what you’re supposed to be doing.
Stewart says that she is “finding it difficult to stay engaged on zoom for long periods of time.”
Students have slowly begun to suffer from “Zoom Fatigue” which is specific tiredness associated with overusing virtual platforms of communication, like Zoom and Microsoft Teams.
Stewart isn’t the only student who is struggling to maintain their grades.
Braden Allen, a second-year Outdoor Adventure Leadership (ADVL) student agrees that “Zooms are fairly bland and impersonal, whereas in-class pulls you in and demands your attention.”
Allen said that his “marks are about 5 – 10% lower than last year because of online learning. Learning from home affects my concentration negatively.”
At the beginning of the school year, students faced a hard decision. They could stay safely at home and save their money by attending classes remotely, or return to campus for the sake of their grades and mental health.
Studying from home is perceived as more difficult as students have adopted a new mindset: that being at home is a time to relax from schoolwork, not be participating in a full course load.
“Home is a place where we relax, whereas Sudbury is where we know we have work to do,” Stewart explained.
But Makayla Heffernan, a second-year Forensics student, said that her “grades have skyrocketed.”
I’ve never been a fan of online school, but my grades at the end of the semester say otherwise. I am an extremely bad test taker, especially for exams. My anxiety goes through the roof and I never do well, scraping by with high seventies, low eighties.
This year I had two classes with Sylvia Hunt in the English department. For my final exam in her Children’s Literature class, instead of a three hour proctored exam, she gave us twelve hours to write our exam. Yes, this does sound generous, but we were asked to write three full well-developed essays, which is not an easy task.
For my second class with her, it was actually a midterm for Literatures in English, and we were given twelve hours to write four essays.
I received a 96% on the Children’s Literature final exam and a 95% on the Literatures in English midterm. My final GPA for the Fall 2020 semester is 9.00.
Does this mean I could have had a mid-nineties average all throughout high school and my first year of university if all my exams were in this format?
So the question still remains, is the COVID-19 pandemic helping or hurting students?
During the pandemic, cheating has never been easier. On midterms that aren’t done through LockDown browser and recorded, students have free rein over their notes and Google. This provides a sense to students that they don’t need to study for exams like in previous years and memorization of the class material is unnecessary.
What students don’t seem to understand is that they are currently paying tuition to meet deadlines, not to actually learn.
This is extremely worrisome to older members of the community as some believe that online learning is hurting future generations.
David Edwards commented on Sudbury Star’s Facebook post announcing Laurentian’s pass/fail option, saying “You would think they would have exceptional grades as social distancing should be keep them from party’s lol all there courses can be completed online but they have to have the motivation to do it yet another ill prepared for life generation and its our fault they’ll remind us in a couple years.”
Despite the struggles with online learning, Laurentian has successfully kept COVID-19 away from campus with only having 1% of classes and labs in person. But, any in-person activities currently have been suspended to restart January 25th to abide by the extension of the second lockdown.