VIRTUAL VIRTUES
Coronavirus pandemic pushes college learning online, but for now or forever?
With spring break in full swing, Sophia Basile was looking forward to returning to school and seeing her friends, but the coronavirus pandemic caused her university to close for the rest of the semester midway through break.
Now, seven weeks later, she’s isolating in her dad’s house and taking online classes.
“I look outside and what the situation has come down to is a tiny virus, that started all the way in Wuhan, is now over here and controlling everything we do, and it sucks,” said Basile, a sophomore law student at Suffolk University in Boston.
“I feel like my education is being stripped away from me.”
College students are one of the largest groups affected by stay- athome orders put in effect to protect people from the coronavirus. Entangled Solutions, a Californiabased education consultancy, reports that 4,234 higher education institutions and 25.8 million college students have been impacted by the pandemic.
The first impacts Basile felt were on March 10, when the university announced it was moving to virtual learning for the remainder of the semester.
Basile had to move off campus until further notice. Her hopes for going back to school after spring break were crushed.
“For us to go from being in school every day, going to work, having a social life, to being locked in our houses, living in fear, not knowing when we will be able to go outside again and seeing people with masks and gloves on is scary and takes a huge physical and mental toll,” Basile said.
While she misses her former life, she believes learning from home may be for the better — at least for now.
“I have a mother who is very high risk, and if she gets the virus, the chances of her surviving are slim to none,” said Basile. “So, if it’s between going back to campus and ( having) the possibility I’ll get the virus, and staying home and doing online classes with a lower risk, I would much rather stay at home and practice social distancing.”
Still, Basile said she does not want the fall semester to be done online, even though she knows she’ll obsess about the cleanliness of her desk and the hygiene of her classmates on return to campus.
“I want to be able to go to college and I want to be able to see my friends, but at the same time there’s no way we can be reassured that every square inch of the school is disinfected or everyone is healthy,” she said.
“I feel like we’re never going to be able to go back to the way things were before.”
Attending classes in the closet
Professors are also adjusting to virtual learning and planning for the future. Salvador Bondoc, chairman of Quinnipiac’s occupational therapy program, said he and his colleagues are doing their best to give students the value they’d receive on site.
Normally, students in clinical programs work hands on with patients and professionals. Now, students use videotaped therapy sessions for “simulated patient observation” and use a Quinnipiac- designed virtual experience to accomplish other competencies.
Absent the clinical setting, Bondoc said students are able to practice exercises with their families. It can be a rewarding experience for the families to see what their children are studying, he said.
Bondoc said there has been mostly positive reception to online learning in the OT department, but he knows it’s difficult for students to adjust.
He said in families with little space in their house and a bunch of commotion, for example, some students are attending classes in their closets.
“It’s very inconvenient for some students, and they’re struggling with finding balance,” Bondoc said.
Bondoc said being empathetic and understanding is important.
“It’s not just about teaching, right?” said Bondoc. “It’s also about being student- centered and understanding what they’re going through and then helping them manage that. They have multiple lives, right? Not just academic lives, their social lives, and what’s happening in their own home. So [ we need to] be able to respond to their needs and be flexible.”
While Bondoc and his colleagues are working their hardest to make online learning succeed, he’s concerned about the volume of preparation that needs to be done for classes in the fall.
“We start classes, I think, Aug. 24 in the fall, and contracts begin Aug. 11 or something like that,” said Bondoc. “I’m not sure if two weeks would would be enough for us to turn things around as rapidly as we did ( in the spring) on a high- quality, highly efficient level. And, of course, the clinical piece we can only simulate so much. How are we going to do that?”
In an email sent to faculty and staff Tuesday, Quinnipiac President Judy Olian said “our strong preference” is to complete the full 2020- 21 academic year on campus, although she acknowledged several issues need to be resolved first.
To that end, Olian announced four multidisciplinary planning groups that will examine shortand long- term options related to public health, academics and operations, from “business as usual” to worst- case scenarios.
“Our goal is to return Quinnipiac to a focus on advancing the university of the future, with the benefit of lessons learned from the COVID- 19 crisis,” Olian said.