A Year of COVID
By Samantha Simmons, Broadcast Editor
March 13th, 2020 was most students’ last time on the HVCC campus. Since then, the world has seemed to “open” and “re-open” dozens of times and many students and staff have been left feeling drained from Zoom classes.
Students and staff alike ran into many challenges as they were all forced to move completely online in the last half of the Spring ’20 semester. This was new for everyone, as the widely used Zoom was not familiar to most at the time.
Since the start of COVID-19 in the United States, the whole country has seen shifts in how people communicate to what hobbies people have.
For students and staff, going out after class or work a huge part of daily life, whether it was to the store, to see friends or a gathering of some sort. Everyone has seen a change in almost all of their daily activities.
Many students feel as though they were left behind when everything moved online.
Carson Simmons, a mortuary science student said, “we have not been able to complete our required labs for our national boards.” For students in this program, this means that they have to retake labs to meet lab hour requirements.
Professors have had to make some changes to their schedules too. Michelle D. Bannoura, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology said she has not had to change much of her curriculum but made some changes to the style in which she gives out assignments. Instead of an assignment every two to three weeks, she believes that weekly assignments have kept her students more involved with the class and the materials.
“I don’t do nearly as much group work or changing of activities during Zoom,” Jessica Brouker, English Professor, said. She thinks it does not work as well through breakout rooms and finds it takes longer on Zoom than it would in a classroom.
Brouker continued to state that there have been fun group activities that she has had to cut out of her curriculum adding that having full class discussions is not ideal over Zoom for students who are afraid to share their thoughts either.
In many classes, students are unable to gather the information that they would have if they were on campus.
Bannoura said in her Experimental Psychology classes students are unable to collect data in the real world because of the virus. Before Covid, her students would be observant on campus and record data for research proposals. Now, they are creating data making the class less interesting.
Journalism students are not able to get out and interview people as per usual due to being afraid of Covid-19 and all of the restrictions that go along with this deadly virus.
Communications student, Angel Rivera-Barrett said regarding learning, “I’m not learning anything really. I’m getting the work done but only getting the work done, I’m not retaining the information.” Just like many students, he feels as though learning online is nowhere near the same quality as learning in a classroom.
Many students feel Zoom lectures, especially being at home, allows for more distractions than if they were in a classroom. Whether it is because of parents or because there are just too many stimulants around.
Brouker discussed that some of the hardest things to figure out about online learning are figuring out how to substitute lessons into an online lesson that would otherwise require students to be in the same room as one another.
Lomie Blum, The Hudsonian’s News Editor, is in the 24-credit hour program which allows her to receive college credits while simultaneously earning her high school diploma equivalency. For her, the switch was no big deal, she prefers online learning because it gives her the time and freedom to work on her schedule.
Blum thinks the staff at HVCC have done a great job of handling transitions to Zoom as well as handling the technical side of it despite glitches from time to time.
Brouker hopes that as restrictions continue to get lifted the school will keep the hybrid model, in-person and on Zoom because it seems to work well with her teaching style.
Over a year later and a majority of classes still have not returned to campus. It is a possibility that in the Fall, there will be more on-campus class offerings.
Brouker summed up most people’s thoughts with the statement, “Zoom is EXHAUSTING.”