In an effort to better understand Emerson students, students are being interviewed to share their experience through virtual learning, here are some of the major challenges and differences with this new form of learning.

There are great challenges when it comes to adapting to the new format of learning because of covid. Many of these struggles are apparent when students face new material, through different methods of teaching. “I feel like with online schooling it seems you can never get a break. After attending a seven-hour school day you have to go ‘home’ and do another four to even six hours of homework. Since covid made it very hard to go outside, the lack of scene change between online school and homework made it seem interchangeable.” said Emerson sophomore)Katelyn DeMarco. These issues are not unheard of as it seems many students around America are dealing with the same stress and lack of motivation when it comes to the amount of workload. Similarly, some of the students are potentially feeling unsatisfied with all the information they are retaining. 

Students also show their hope for some change to happen gradually as the school gets adapted to this type of system. 

“No homework. I do not see an importance to homework at all this year since it already feels like you are doing homework at school. I have not learned anything from any of the homework I have gotten and we spend most of the class going over the homework anyway so having it is just a waste of time for everyone” Katelyn suggests throughout her response. No matter the solution, there seems to be an ongoing trend all throughout the response, with the issues being apparent due to the lack of social support.

Although there are many struggles that come with learning in a new fashion, there are many up-sides to a less traditional format. For instance, some learners may feel that since the work is now more self-structured, it allows the student to worry about themselves solely and problem-solve more independently. This can be expressed through the opinion of Katelyn as she shares what she enjoys about virtual learning, “…it made doing presentations a lot easier too since I struggle with extremely bad social anxiety. So doing it in front of a screen is way better than doing it in front of a room of 30 people all staring at you. It gave me a lot of confidence and it made me feel like I was on a phone call with a friend, ” adds Katelyn. Many students may share similar positive-experience stating that there is less stress due to the lack of memorization that is required, and learning online has helped their note-taking skills. Overall, despite the troubles, there are some more helpful aspects to this new setting.

“It has definitely been a struggle for both the students and the teachers and it’s hard to find the right balance.” -Katelyn DeMarco