24 OPI NIO N
SIN Vol. 22 Issue 03
‘Anybody out There’: “Sit in front of your laptop, pay your Teaching in Lockdown €3000 fees, watch these videos, do your assignments, don’t see anyone and don’t complain about it.” — The perils of online learning Dr Pádraig Lenihan, School of History and Philosophy
My personal reactions to teaching-at-adistance do not, I hope, sound whingey. I’m getting paid, I’m out of the rain and no one is coughing or sneezing over me. When we were told to lock up and go home back in March we were in the ninth week of a twelve week term so what remained was devising coursework assessment instead of essays, frantically scanning chapters for reading material to ‘put up’ on Blackboard and grading. My preference for a hard copy and a biro isn’t just old fogeyism. Grading on a screen is wearying on eyes, neck and mouse arm, but paper is so much easier to count and keep track of essays so there are fewer mistakes. I’m not sentimental about face-to face lectures. When they are bad they can be very bad. As a student many
some of the immediacy and, dare I say, variability of the lecture in a theatre. Ah theatre! That reminds me that a lecture is a performance that feeds of the energy of a live, present, audience. As a ‘moderator’ of face-to-face tutorials and seminars I’ll try to kick-start a discussion of some problem that is relevant to the module maybe by posing a specific, targeted question from a document that the members of the group should have studied beforehand. Everyone will look fixedly down at their notebook, laptop (displaying the class documents, you hope) or smartphone except for that mature student at the front. Then ask a question of one person and usually find that they’ve nailed the problem. Reluctance to speak in response to a general invitation is puzzling: Fear of looking foolish? Fear of seeming to show-off ? My point is that the face to face encounter demands social skill, emotional intelligence and
The face to face encounter demands social skill, emotional intelligence and ‘cop-on’. Push one student a bit harder? Back off and switch to someone else? The virtual encounter is one-dimensional, thin and rigid by comparison. I daren’t throw out a general question into the silence because I won’t know if my internet connection has crashed, your microphone isn’t working or no one wants to be the first to break the ice. years ago I made a false start in preMed and I will never forget a professor in, let’s say one of the core science subjects, happily conducting a mumbled conversation with the blackboard as he chalked up Greek letters and a diagram of a cylinder. On the other hand, to hear a skilled lecturer perform is an unforgettable experience. It’s early days in autumn term but virtual lectures are not dauntingly difficult to set up. I favour robust and simple technology. It is easy to record, stop and ‘export’ to MP3 format on ‘Audacity’. I press record and don’t stop until the end because I haven’t worked out yet how to pause, to cut, or to edit. The result is an authentic sound that may include ringing telephones, my neighbour’s hedge-strimmer (she favours the ruthlessly pruned flat-top) or a barking dog. If I say the wrong word (I blurted ‘incest’ rather than ‘incense’ today when talking of Archbishop Laud) it can’t be unsaid. The recorded work may retain
‘cop-on’. Push one student a bit harder? Back off and switch to someone else? The virtual encounter is one-dimensional, thin and rigid by comparison. I daren’t throw out a general question into the silence because I won’t know if my internet connection has crashed, your microphone isn’t working or no one wants to be the first to break the ice. And what is it about the general reluctance to switch on cameras unless the moderator makes an issue of it? I am veering towards a compromise that would let cameras stay switched off except for presentations. I really don’t know the cramped or crowded conditions that some students might have to work from. That said, the habit of replying by typing into the ‘chat’ feature (something like WhatsApp) rather than speaking will be gently discouraged. The experience is already quite far enough removed from the real as it is. But sure together we will make it as real as we can.
By Ellen O’Donoghue By the time this issue comes out, we’ll be into week 6 of our first ever fully online semester. Halfway there. I’ll be six weeks into my first experience of online learning, because I was on work placement last year when the pandemic struck, and all went online. This experience, for anybody, would be hard. The uncertainty, the stress, the deadlines, the final year of college. The most important year of my academic career to date. And I’m doing it in the middle of a pandemic. Love that for me. In the beginning, I really thought that it was just me, that was struggling with the workload of final year, doing it from the spare bedroom in my home house in Donegal where I now reside. But I started talking to people and they feel the same. Even those who had done their final weeks of college last year online, said that they were struggling. All arguments seem to be the same, and everybody seems to think that they’re the only one going through it. I asked people, across all colleges and years in NUI Galway, to tell me how they’re doing, to see if it was just my course, just my final year of college, or just me struggling to get into the swing of things again. This is what I got: “This online learning craic is so intense. They’re putting far too much pressure on us. Hopefully it eases off as the weeks go on (week 6 and it hasn’t).”
I feel as if some lecturers don’t realise how heavy some of the content is to get through. Some pre-recorded lectures are taking 2+ hours to get through when you factor in the extra stuff going along with them (videos, further reading etc.), which in isolation is okay but when it’s every week and more than one module does it, it really starts to add up. I don’t think it’s intentional, but I think work is being piled on us. I feel like trying to make up for the lack of contact hours lecturers are piling on the work left, right, and centre. I’m very fortunate that I have all live lectures, but I hear a lot of people are getting pre-recorded lectures which I don’t think is a great idea. I think to improve on these lecturers should be given a set number of hours. For instance, my lecturers have two-hour slots, so we get a full two-hour lecture. Not even ten minutes of a break. We’re falling asleep after one hour never mind two! And then there’s piles of reading and pre lectures to watch before the live one? Please tell me how that makes sense! I feel like lecturers are putting far too much of their content online which is putting a lot of stress and anxiety on students. I feel like some lecturers don’t realise we have other modules as well as theirs. Getting loads of blackboard notifications in the middle of the night doesn’t help things either. They are giving so much work it’s hard to keep up. My course has moved online for the most part but they shoved all of our faceto-face learning so they can be done by the 20 October, and they did this by changing the timetables really fre-
quently. But you were penalised if you missed a face to face learning session because of the timetable change. I know someone who had to work when he had free time off on his timetable, and then the timetable switched so he had a session during his work, and he couldn’t go and was penalised for it. Along with this, the material we are doing is really heavy, but it’s just with the lack of any social interaction and having to study all day in our rooms, me and my friends have been finding it extremely hard to stay motivated and to have interest in the course anymore. It’s not fair. That’s one thing that we can all take away from this year. None of this is fair. Third-level students are being royally shafted right now and I am so sick of trying to explain this to people. Teachers in schools can see their colleagues. Students can see their classmates. Construction workers can see their colleagues. Anybody who is working with anybody right now, or is in a different level of education, can see people and continue to grow socially because of this. Because it is important. Third-level students can’t see anyone. Except their housemates, or family members if they’re living at home. Here we are, simply being told no. Sit in front of your laptop, pay your €3000 fees, watch these videos, do your assignments, don’t see anyone and don’t complain about it. Literally asking us to do exactly what they complained about something we were apparently always doing before. Instead of “get off your screen and talk to us”, it’s now “get on your screen and be quiet”. Social interaction is one of the most important aspects of life, for growth and for mental wellbeing. That’s what we grew up being told. But now we’re grown, and we’re being told to go completely against it. So, I hope this answers your question. Has college this year been a more stressful experience than previous years? Yes. Yes it has. Give us a break, and for the love of God, don’t think we don’t deserve it.
Photo by jeshoots.com on Unsplash
