Welcome to the 2020-2021 school year. Things look a little different compared to the way they were this time last year. Over the past few weeks, I (he/him) have found myself feeling doubtful and insecure about the upcoming academic year, as I am sure many of you have been feeling. Although our transition to remote learning happened months ago (yes, March was months ago), there is still a novelty to online learning that can be daunting. It will require an adaptation to our preconceived understandings of pedagogy; it will require an individual effort to stay on top of readings and lectures (especially if they are asynchronous, but more on that later). Even more important, however, is that it will require active empathy and compassion for everyone—because we are collectively undergoing one of the largest transitory moments in the twenty-first century.
As foreign as this new style of education may feel, there are some students, including myself, that have participated in summer courses, giving us an inside scoop on what this online learning format might look like. As with anything new, there will always be hiccups and learning curves to work through—it is my hope that our experiences as online summer students may shed some light on concerns you have anticipated and alleviate some of your insecurities. Who knows? Maybe it might give you a little hope, too. Ben Pottruff (he/him), a Learning Strategist in the Victoria College Registrar’s Office, was kind enough to sit down with me and chat about some coping mechanisms to consider when transitioning back into the academic year. These insights will be explored throughout the article.
Let’s start by unpacking some of the difficulties we might face as online students. Sahar Mahmoudian (she/her), a second-year student studying Neuroscience, conducted research over the summer session and shared her story of having to be a researcher from home. In order to access all the information necessary to complete her tasks, she was required to download lab databases onto her computer, which consequently shut down and erased much of her previously collected data. This set her back two or three weeks on research. She said, “You’re helping a Master’s student with their thesis—it’s collaborative work! It’s stressful beyond just being a student—it’s the stress of knowing you might be setting others behind.” We swapped anecdotes on technological mishaps in the classroom setting. I recalled being in a three-hour lecture, only noticing after the one-and-a-half-hour mark that the slides being presented on-screen had not refreshed for me, and I had missed about 14 slides of information while my professor talked in the background.
When I spoke to Pottruff, I brought up these technical difficulties and asked for his thoughts. He compared it to commuting delays: I think anyone that has taken the TTC can understand the struggle of being almost on time only to face an inexplicable delay for questionable reasons. (To the professor whose class I was consistently late to, I promise, it’s not my fault). Pottruff said this is all part of the process. He suggested that we plan ahead: instead of saying “if my technology fails,” we should be saying “when my technology fails.” Pottruff also had a few digital hygiene tips we should be practicing. First, make sure that your devices are sufficiently powered. Second, use the start of term to archive course content. This ensures that if connectivity issues arise, there is always a task to work on that is not predicated on having an internet connection. Finally, join a recognized study group to make connections with your peers in the same class!
Another major point of concern for the upcoming session is asynchronous classes. Mehr Mukhtar (she/her), VUSAC’s Vice President External, aptly explained the discrepancies between synchronous and asynchronous classes. She said, “Synchronous classes instill the same need to participate and engage [as in-person classes]. Asynchronous requires motivation to operate on a schedule. There is a backlog if you miss a lecture. They pile up.” That last point she made hit home for me personally.During the first summer session, I took an asynchronous English course. The professor would separate the three-hour lecture into three one-hour videos to make it more digestible. Some of these videos were even less than an hour. At the beginning of the session, I felt it reasonable to give myself a break from watching them (whether deserved or undeserved is yet to be decided). “It’s not even a full hour,” I’d say to myself, “I can catch up in no time.” Because of my “breaks,” I found myself having several hours of lectures to watch at a time. It was overwhelming and stressful, so I asked Pottruff, “What can you do if you find yourself in this situation?” He told me that the largest challenge of online learning will be pushing your time management skills. He recommended that we think of time on different scales and use those scales as planning tools. For example, looking at all four months in one glance and planning the twelve-week semester using the syllabus will allow us to anticipate when our workload might bottleneck. He called this the Semester Template. He then told me about the Weekly Template, a necessary scale to ensure the Semester Template is successful. Our weeks should balance all our courses. Synchronous classes might be easier to plan, since there is a set time for us to arrive and participate. We need to treat asynchronous classes as synchronous courses and allot a dedicated time in our schedule to work on them—this is central to building good habits.
But what if there is a personal issue, or something comes up that prevents us from participating to the best of our abilities? Although unfortunate, these situations are very real. Pottruff told me that the best thing to do is to be strategic about the course content being covered. He said, “If you’re coming off of a couple of bad weeks, it’s better to catch up where you are in the moment. For example, preparing for the week 10 learning experience instead of week 8.” He also encouraged us to know the value of the evaluations we are moving toward and prioritize more heavily graded items. He said to me as a final note on the subject, “Skimming is always better than skipping,” when it comes to readings.
Mukhtar and I continued our conversation on online learning, which brought us to stress and the performativity of being on camera in synchronous classes. She said to me, “Online [learning] changes a lot because subtle body language that can be picked up on in-person can’t be seen.” She told me anecdotes of having to exaggerate head nods to confirm that she’s actively engaged. Pottruff stated that this is an anticipated concern for students. “Camera-on replicates what happens at the library—we feel socially accountable to the strangers in the room. We behave differently because we feel observed.” This need to perform for others online to compensate due to the lack of in-person body language can be exacerbated by the fact that we have to see ourselves. Seeing ourselves results in a hyper-fixation on the way we interact with our peers. I remember the first time I turned on the video for one of my synchronous classes and caught some of the little idiosyncrasies in the way that I simply exist. I felt this immediate and intrinsic need to apologize to anyone that had ever seen me. The term for this phenomenon is “Zoom fatigue.” It’s real. It’s exhausting. It’s a tough adaptation that we are being challenged to make. When I asked Pottruff what he thought about this, he started off by saying that he had felt it too. He suggested using a sticky note to cover yourself on the screen, thereby minimizing the meta-analysis of yourself. He also talked to me about digital versus analog learning. He encourages us to have protected times away from screens, maybe printing a reading and annotating it in a nearby park or taking notes on paper instead of typing them on a screen.
Another point that Pottruff stresses was that online classroom etiquette is still being negotiated. He tells me that we have to take breaks. I was under the impression that the “we” he was talking about was the collective human “we.” This is something we are undergoing together as a group of people inhabiting a single space. He also told me that there are positives to having your camera on. “Most of us police ourselves if we think we’re being watched. If we think the instructor is watching us, we’re more likely to perform. If we feel more anonymous, we feel less pressure to perform.” Pottruff stated that the pressure to perform can be conducive to more engaged learning, but it can also be fatiguing. He encourages us to take time for ourselves to feel less pressure and strike a balance between “toggle-camera-on and toggle-camera-off.”
Vibhuti Kacholia (she/her), a fourth-year Vic student studying Global Health with minors in Psychology and Equity, shared her thoughts about going into her last year of undergrad in the COVID climate including an experience with a psychology professor that brought some hope for her upcoming year. She had this particular professor both in-person and then online in the summer session, and noticed how he had made an active effort to translate his teaching style to the online environment. Kacholia also spoke to me about a fear she has about hybrid learning; she asks, “How will online synchronous work? How will I feel part of that classroom environment?” It was in this moment that I realized there are still unanswered questions. It is unfortunate that we do not have all the answers. We cannot possibly have all the answers.
My insecurity was reignited for a moment before I remembered something Mukhtar had said when I asked if she was optimistic for the coming year: “I’m always hopeful. As hard as transitioning to online has been, I think solidarity between student groups and professors in strategic ways to accommodate the different nuances of transitioning is promising.”
This rings true for everything moving forward in the upcoming year. We owe one another an exuberant amount of empathy and compassion. We are peers, friends, and students—real people with real experiences. Let this be a moment of solidarity with one another in the belief that we shall overcome, and that we shall overcome together.
Comments are closed.