{"id":19564,"date":"2020-05-27T09:56:57","date_gmt":"2020-05-27T16:56:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=19564"},"modified":"2020-05-27T09:58:38","modified_gmt":"2020-05-27T16:58:38","slug":"student-editors-letter-distance-learning-does-not-have-to-mean-lesser-quality-learning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2020\/05\/27\/student-editors-letter-distance-learning-does-not-have-to-mean-lesser-quality-learning\/","title":{"rendered":"Student editor\u2019s letter: Distance learning does not have to mean lesser-quality learning"},"content":{"rendered":"

Having taken a few online courses back when they were a mere option, I can say with confidence that distance learning is set up for, and excelled at, by a really small percentage of the Camosun population (and I\u2019m talking students and staff).<\/p>\n

We are all doing our best here, but what happens when you\u2019ve got an instructor who sends along the slideshows that would normally supplement their lectures with the expectation that it suddenly suffices for an entire lesson? What happens when you\u2019ve got a student who is used to in-person learning and relies on the in-person aspect to really absorb the information?<\/p>\n

Quality goes down.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
During the COVID-19 crisis, we’ll publish a student editor’s letter online every Wednesday (file photo).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

If nothing else, online learning will teach students how to be self-sufficient and regulate knowledge themselves, which\u2014strictly speaking\u2014is one of the main points to education. Everyone will have to work harder to succeed, but ultimately, it will come down to how bad each student wants to succeed, and how bad each instructor wants to instruct.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s pretty easy to cookie-cut your way through some lectures and get a decent grade (at least in the School of Arts and Science, in my experience). You show up, take a few notes, study a bit, and write an exam. (I\u2019m oversimplifying here, but you get the idea.)<\/p>\n

But without the in-person guidance of instructors to give students nuggets of condensed verbal information, it\u2019s all up to the student. Granted, every student\u2019s learning style comes into play here, but the instructor often ends up doing some of the student\u2019s work for them, and it\u2019s a really fine line between how much is too much and how much is simply being a good instructor.<\/p>\n

A large piece of instructional guidance has been taken out of the equation for Camosun students right now. Is it possible for the quality of instruction to not go down? Yes, it\u2019s possible. But it requires the student to take more responsibility for the material. It requires the students to answer some of their own questions and give themselves solid in-person feedback, and, through that, to develop the confidence to learn more independently and develop the confidence to learn how to think and how to convey those thoughts.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s not going to be easy for Camosun to keep a high quality of instruction during a time of online learning, and it\u2019s never been easier for those who don\u2019t want to make changes to steer the blame away from themselves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Having taken a few online courses back when they were a mere option, I can say with confidence that distance learning is set up for, and excelled at, by a really small percentage of the Camosun population (and I\u2019m talking students and staff). We are all doing our best here, but what happens when you\u2019ve […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18397,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-webexclusive","category-views"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19564","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19564"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19564\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19565,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19564\/revisions\/19565"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}