Due to Corona, we all had to learn new ways. New ways of living, new ways of working, new ways of teaching. And for students, new ways of studying. Everything online! That was, and still is, an enormous challenge. After months of ‘working with what we have’ and making the best out of the situation, and after the realization that this online studying won’t be over soon, it’s time to look into ways of making teaching and studying online, better.

In the last Urban Studies Newsletter, you’ve read the op-ed piece by lecturer Frans Willem Korsten, where he shared his thoughts on what future online teaching should look like. In the below op-ed piece, Timo Brands, student Urban Studies, writes about his point of view. He also has quite some useful tips, for both students and lecturers. Enjoy!

Over the last few months, I found out how important social interactions are on campus. The coffee in the morning with peers, just saying “hi” to each other and the usual small talk. These things are all part of being human, however with the online classes I found that nobody really wants to do these kinds of things behind their laptops.

Switching to online learning has asked for a shift in the way students, teachers, and staff communicate with one another. “Working with what we have”, as said by Frans Willem Korsten and many more teachers, became a go-to. Indeed, it cannot have been easy for teachers and staff to shift the entire programme to online teaching. But students were also very affected by this change.

Motivation and Discipline

The lack of standard schedule, meaning the students must have the discipline and the planning skills to study. All of this can only be done at home because the libraries are not open, or at least they were closed for most of the time. Now that these places are, at least partly, open the motivation to study will hopefully increase. However, the places are limited, creativity is needed to find new places. Coffee bars, or other places where you can easily take brakes and more importantly, places that are not at home, could be possibilities.

Furthermore, the change in schedule was very different, students were a lot more on their own. Creating a difference in learning style. Taking notes and reading them later changed into watching the lectures repeatedly. Trying to focus on just the screen is far more difficult than focussing on the lecturer and the presentation. The influence of other distractions on the screen started to interfere with the classes. Of course, this is always a problem, as we need to do lots on our own, however if it is the only way to see the lecture this became more problematic.

I have a few recommendations for students, to make online studying easier. In order to focus properly, close the WhatsApp Desktop version or stop using Facebook or Instagram in your breaks. This shortens your screen time, making it easier to focus on the screen while you are studying. Moreover, normally there is a 15 minutes break in between the two halves of the lecture, do this at home as well. This helps you focus more and making learning easier. It also is important to have a routine in the morning, which helps you get out of bed. Getting dressed properly might work in finding the motivation that you need to get things done. Go out for a morning run, make a very nice coffee or something totally different. If you do this every day, the result will become very noticeable, the day starts, and you are ready for it. This is also combined with stetting an alarm in the morning. Sleeping until 1:00 pm might seem like relaxing, however this only makes you sluggish, less active and above all, more tired.

Exams and Proctoring

The exams are very different, take-home exams became sort of the norm and I think this was a welcome change. Students were taking these very seriously. In other words, it worked quit well. But now the controversial topic, proctoring, a necessary tool? Or privacy invading? Both are, in a way, true. Apparently, some students cheat on exams if they are not supervised. Most students, of course, will not, but no guarantee can be provided. Therefore, the tool is a necessity. This does not give it a free pass however, there are still a lot of invasions of privacy that are crossing a line. IP-address for example, or that the software browsers internet history. Therefore, this tool has flaws which need to be filtered out, to ensure both anti-cheat and guarantee privacy.

Group projects

Group projects are a useful tool to learn from your peers and must never go away completely, however due to people being all over the world it became difficult to work together. If someone was not replying to texts messages, or other ways of communicating, they were unreachable. This could make working together almost impossible. Discussions became harder as well, some people were late or had problems connecting with their laptop. Working in smaller groups will be the solution to this problem, or at least lower the chances of something like this happening. As always, if your group partner is not doing anything and is unreachable, tell your teacher. They will not assume someone does not help with the project. They will help you find a solution.

Communication 

Communication is more important than ever, especially it must be streamlined over one flow. It means that there should only be just one place where everyone can put up and receive information about the semester. With regular updates, even when there are no updates. Of course, everyone involved is working as hard as they can to get things done, but it could be useful to let students know what is going on and perhaps what is going well, or what goes wrong. “Get together to talk” as Frans Willem Korsten said, I totally agree with this phrase. We are all adults and students need to let teachers know what goes well and what not. I think people often forget the power of positive feedback. It is very important to let teachers know what went well. Furthermore, teachers must find ways to keep their presentations interesting. Frans Willem Korsten suggested making them shorter, elaborating and talking about it in a session where everyone is free to join. This is a great idea. This makes the interactions with teachers more interesting. Keeping the interaction as normal as possible. Just putting the lectures online is in my opinion not enough. This makes it easier to push the work forward and by doing so, getting overloaded with work coming closer to the exam period. If there are weekly sessions, with the (workgroup) teacher, it will be harder to become lazy and postpone your studying.

So, after some tips, it was very nice to see how fast teachers adapted to the online teaching. The inventive ways teachers found how to capture their own lectures. Even guest lectures where still achieved. Continuing with the scheduled presentations, the Microsoft Teams application worked quit well. Moreover, the Covid-19 crisis started just before our mid-term week, adapting to the new situation was also very well done. The take-home exams worked great. As I said, students took them very seriously and perhaps the take-home exams should be implemented even after the Covid-19 crisis. Finally, the most important part of teaching and studying, have fun while interacting with one another. This makes the already little interaction students and staff has much more interesting. Being a student can be lonely, especially now. Having fun with each other makes sitting behind a camera much better, in total agreement with Frans Willem Korsten “Lighten their and your burden”.

 

All in all, the ideas found by teachers and the university had different outcomes, some worked well, others less. Making lectures short and to the point makes sure students are paying attention while they are watching. However, students can make it easier for themselves as well. Cutting down screen time in your breaks will make looking at your screen more comfortable. In combination with a standard schedule or morning routine, studying online will still be challenging and very different from the regular way. However, everyone needs to make the best of this situation. Studying will still be a very large part of your life, having fun while doing it makes it much more bearable.