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Observations

Observations

| Opinion

Online Learning during the COVID-19 Pandemic

What do we gain and what do we lose when classrooms go virtual?

By Yoshiko Iwai on March 13, 2020

Online Learning during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Credit: Watchara Piriaputtanapun Getty Images

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I woke up an hour late Wednesday morning, and by the time I had thrown on a sweatshirt, prepared my
glass of Emergen-C, and logged onto Zoom, my class had been going on for 15 minutes. The night before
I had taken cough syrup for my seasonal cold, and this was the first day my school switched to virtual
instruction. Over the course of the three-hour workshop, I noticed my puffy eyes on the panel of faces
and became self-conscious. I turned off my video. I became distracted with the noise of sirens outside
and muted my speaker, only to then realize: by the time you’re done muting-and-unmuting, the right
moment to join the conversation has already passed. I found myself texting on my computer, stepping
away to make coffee, running to the bathroom, writing a couple e-mails, and staring at my classmate’s
dog in one of the video panels. I don’t think my experience is unique; I imagined similar situations
playing out in virtual offices and classrooms across the world.

In the aftermath of the World Health Organization’s designation of the novel coronavirus as a pandemic
on March 11, universities across America are shutting down in an attempt to slow its spread. On March
6, the University of Washington took the lead, canceling all in-person classes, with a wave of universities
across the country following suit: University of California, Berkeley, U.C., San Diego, Stanford, Rice,
Harvard, Columbia, Barnard, N.Y.U, Princeton and Duke, among many others.
This shift into virtual classrooms is the culmination of the past weeks’ efforts to prevent COVID-19 from
entering university populations and spreading to local communities: cancellation of university-funded
international travel for conferences, blanket bans on any international travel for spring break, canceling
study-abroad programs, creating registration systems for any domestic travel.

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Columbia University, which I now attend virtually, moved all classes online starting on March 11. The
following morning, president Bollinger declared that classes would be held virtually for the remainder of
the school year, and suspended all university-related travel; both international and domestic. The
pandemic has affected over 114 countries, killing over 4,000 and shows no sign of abating, leading to
chaos in university administration and among students. I find myself obsessing over my family in Japan,
especially my mother, whose lung cancer puts her at particular risk. Cancellations are affecting future
students as well—admitted students’ events, open houses, and campus tours are all being canceled to
minimize contagion.

The quick turn to platforms like Zoom is disrupting curricula, particularly for professors less equipped to
navigate the internet and the particularities of managing a classroom mediated by a screen and
microphone. I had professors cancel class because they had technical difficulties, trouble with WiFi, or
were simply panicked over the prospect of teaching the full class over the new platform. With university
IT services focusing efforts on providing professors with how-to webinars on using online platforms,
individual student needs for these same services have been placed on hold.

While the initial shift online has created a flurry of chaos, there are benefits to a virtual classroom.
Especially in a place like New York, students can continue participating in discussion sections and
lectures without riding the subway for an hour, avoiding the anxiety of using public transit or being in
other incubators like classrooms, public bathrooms and cafeterias. Students can “sit in” on a class while
nursing a common cold or allergies that come with the season, but which can make students a target of
serious threats or violence—particularly racialized harassment for Asians. I have found immense relief in
not having to pay for Lyfts to campus, avoiding side-eyes for my runny nose or using the little remaining
hand sanitizer I have left after holding subway poles. In some situations, online teaching may not even
affect student behavior or learning. Studies have shown that medical students learn and perform equally
in live versus recorded lectures, and these results are reassuring at a time like the COVID-19 outbreak.
Increasing access to information and communications technologies worldwide, along with the
opportunities that they afford for learning and teaching, is changing the narratives of open and flexible
learning. Two recent reports tracking the development of online and distance education in the United
States suggest that while campus-based registrations are down overall, distance education enrolments
are on the rise, with one in three students in the US higher education sector taking at least one online
distance education course (Seaman, Allen, & Seaman, 2018; Legon, Gareett, & Fredericksen, 2019).

This picture is not that dissimilar in other developed as well as many developing countries. For instance,
recent surveys of student access to information and communications technologies at the University of
the South Pacific, which has fourteen campuses on very small island states of the southwest Pacific
region, show that around 80% of its students have access to mobile devices such as laptops and
smartphones along with reliable access to the Internet (Jione, Fong, & Naidu, 2019). Availability of this
kind of infrastructure means that a wider range of students from high school graduates to those who are
working fulltime can have access to educational opportunities. It also means access to flexible learning
opportunities, and a chance to upskill and reorient while still in employment.

As a result, fewer and fewer students across the higher education sector, and around the world, are
either studying or working at any one time. Instead, many are living their lives at the junction of multiple
student identities, working and studying at the same time, and in search for a curriculum and
qualification that will best meet their needs and career aspirations now and in the future. The
implications of this kind of learning and teaching landscape for educational institutions are numerous.
They include not only the need for an understanding of contemporary learners and their learning
contexts but also the design of a curriculum and its suitability for the complex learning environment that
they will inhabit in the future.