Adjusting to Online Learning

When I was first informed that the university had enforced online learning for lectures with over 90 students, I felt a sense of dread, now knowing that the COVID-19 epidemic was very much a reality. I wasn’t sure how my learning and performance would be affected by these sudden abrupt changes. My family was also worried for me, as I an international student alone in the UK, without any family near that could act as my guardian in Manchester. After debating the topic, I decided it best for me to leave the UK early and return to Hong Kong to be with my family. I was at first worried that I would not be able to go to online lectures due to the time differences, but was relieved to find out that the lectures would be podcasted rather than live, so I could revisit the lectures in my own time.

While at home, I was immediately put under two weeks of self quarantine. As such, I had time to myself to focus on my learning. This was at first a little strange to me, as I was accustomed to physically being in a lecture hall, so only having the podcasts from previous years made me feel as if I wasn’t learning as effectively as before. Moreover, I found that I couldn’t focus as well, as the podcasts only showed the lecture slides, so I sometimes lost track of what the lecturers were referring to when they were speaking. I was gradually able to adjust to online learning, listening to the podcasts when they were uploaded and taking notes. I also had coursework that had to be completed, so majority of my time was taken up doing schoolwork or catching up with friends online.

After the self quarantine period was over, much of the same routine was maintained due to social distancing being enforced in Hong Kong due to a second wave of COVID-19. It was also during this time that I received further communication from the Psychology Year 2 Lead, stating that there would be no examinations taking place, with any coursework now accounting for the entirety of my module grade. This both alleviated and put more pressure on me, as I was now able to focus more time on my coursework to do the best I can, but now my entire grade was based on that one piece of coursework, which brought about worries of if I were to not do as well as I’d like in my coursework, I would no longer have an exam to possibly help push my grade up. Therefore, I’d have to work harder that I was at the time. Fortunately, being at home allowed me to have more time in the day for me to do my work, and I was able to complete my coursework and still keep up with online learning with relative ease.

Overall, adjusting to online learning did take some time to adjust to but after a while, I was able to navigate through it with a relative sense of normalcy.

Related posts:

This article is catered primarily to fellow Launch School students, but could be valuable for anyone that is studying in a long, self-paced, mastery-based program in which there are no official…