Universities’ switch to e-learning ‘frustrating’

Before mid-March, Dawn Eckhoff’s nurse practitioner students honed their skills in a lab where they practiced using tools like an otoscope to look in classmates’ ears before they one day perform the technique on real patients.

For nearly three months, though, that kind of hands-on training has been on hold while University of Central Florida students and faculty were forced along with peers across the country to improvise with little notice.

Now those future health care workers take videos of themselves practicing on family members. Music students are learning the nuances of their instruments over Zoom. And art students are making do outside their studios.

That transition has been complicated by the idea that no one knows when this experiment in mass distance learning is going to end. Some experts have suggested it could be two years before campuses resemble a prepandemic world.

And, already, administrators at schools like UCF are saying inperson classes might begin again for fall, but end early just before Thanksgiving because students returning from holiday travel could bring with them germs from elsewhere.

Instructors like Eckoff say the sudden change and continued uncertainty wasn’t just difficult for faculty, but “very frustrating, I’m sure” for students.

That’s been the case for Jordan Ellis, a University of Florida student who in March started attending class from the home she shares with her family in Orlando’s College Park neighborhood.

Her father also works from home and Ellis, 22, said she usually sets up her laptop in the kitchen or dining room. If she needs more quiet, like for an exam, she retreats to her bedroom.

“It’s definitely been weird to do school from home,” Ellis said. “It’s hard to stay focused, and I have two dogs that are constantly running around.”

Students vented in a survey by UCF, with 43% saying they somewhat or strongly disagreed with the notion that they had “been able to adjust well to remote instruction.” About 18% said they had none of the resources or few