Neil Ahmed

The Good, The Bad, And The Inevitable, Temporary Approach To Learning. 

The Pennsylvania State University’s COVID-19 task-force announced that they have extended their plan of virtual learning through the Spring and Summer semesters through 2021. The task force is ultimately a congregation of  “large committee of Academic Administrators, Faculty Senate leadership, and representatives from the offices of the Registrar.” For students and faculty, COVID-19 has changed the way we work, learn and collaborate inside and outside the classroom.

The Good: The Zoomroom

I have been a student at Penn State Abington for two semesters. My experience at Penn State Abington thus far has been completely virtual, and it is feasible that the rest of my experience at The Penn State University could solely be virtual. Zoom is arguably holding this entire virtual learning experience together and is the leader across the country in remote learning. 

But I don’t think professors should do away with Zoom once in-person classes resume. Zoom can be a very great tool for group projects that would have regularly been completed outside the classroom to begin with. I think that Zoom projects or lectures, if carried out for only a few more semesters, can be beneficial in the long term development of new coursework, balanced course-load, and smoother collaborative projects for both students and professors.

The Bad: The Classroom

Ultimately, there is no learning experience as intimate, personal, or firsthand as physically being with classmates and faculty in a classroom. You can’t avoid people in a normal classroom. Eye contact, body language, and the professor’s responsibility to make sure everyone is on top of their work while in class is literally gone. Professors and students are new to this type of virtual medium, and our ability to adapt and adjust on the fly could be a key asset moving forward. 

I think the biggest takeaway from this pandemic coinciding with being a student is simply the fact that you really get what you put in. Instead of bashing or disliking the university’s choice of overwhelming precaution, we as students should utilize this time of uncomfortable changes and maybe take a few lessons from this virtual world during COVID-19 and apply them when classes return to “normal.”