How the coronavirus has changed how college students learn
COVID-19 hit America with full force on March 16th, 2020. It closed jobs, filled hospitals, and sent children home from schools. Most imagined that by May this would be over and we would be free to start our lives again. However, by the time June rolled around, we quickly learned that this might be a new normal and we need to learn how to adapt to it. And most places did. Including colleges around the world; creating new ideas and innovations for their campuses to be safe but still continue to let students learn.
Hannah Finley is one of those college students. Hannah is a junior at the College of Charleston and is majoring in Secondary education with a focus in English.
One of the first questions I asked her was about why she chose English for her concentration. She stated quickly that she found it important to “be able to communicate your ideas effectively” and there’s value in text and being able to connect through it. As an education major myself, I loved this answer because people often make fun of having to take English classes in school, however, English is not just about reading and writing but also about communicating and finding a way to express yourself in words rather than actions. Hannah and I talked for about 45 minutes about how COVID has affected our learning and our way of life here at the College. Something that we both quickly realized we had in common is that we had to adapt quickly to the circumstances of COVID in higher education.
A virus that spreads this quickly and easily made it difficult to create a plan of action to get college students back on their campuses. For some schools, it was simple; move into your dorm, quarantine for two weeks and then you can go to in-person classes. However, it wasn’t as simple as it seemed and created issues between students and admins when students were not being fed or their dietary restrictions were not being respected. Another option was to just have everyone come back to campus, do some classes in person, and deal with the consequences. And as those schools found out, the consequences were about 1000 students with positive COVID test results back and not enough quarantining areas for those students. Thankfully, the College of Charleston chose to do online classes for a number of weeks before moving us back to campus and only putting the classes that had to be in person into a classroom. As of October 13th, 2020, the College of Charleston only has 7 reported cases. Now, Hannah and I both agree that we don’t think that there are only 7 cases on campus but that’s neither here nor there.
The college did a good job when we were transitioning online during the Spring semester 2020. This “crisis learning”, as Hannah called it, was quickly put online and told to go. Hannah found that one of the most difficult parts of online learning that semester was how fast they pushed it. Most professors were not digitally literate enough to create an online class in a week. And some students weren’t digitally literate enough to be learning online with no one showing them how to use it. Hannah talked about how, since going online, she’s had to become much more digitally literate than before and has started to read more paper books to make up for the lack of paperwork in her education. She went from mostly paper to mostly online completely flipping how she usually worked. Hannah finds herself doing a lot of online research and using online resources a lot more. Since COVID hit, online resources have become much more assessable to students and teachers alike.
The last question I asked Hannah was about how she thought COVID would affect the classroom going into the future. She said that she’s expecting “to see a lot more online classes … because this proves we can have classes online”. She also believes that in the K-12 setting, “teachers have had to incorporate a lot of new technology … they’ve had to get creative with the technology. And I think that that has opened a lot of doors. I think there’s probably going to be even more innovation with the like, especially in the classroom.”
I think in total it is obvious through talking with Hannah and living through this as a college student as well that our digital literacy has changed since COVID hit. As college students, we had to pick it up fast and learn how to use it correctly. Like Hannah says, I don’t think this technology is going anywhere now that we’ve used it to this capacity. If you’re not digitally literate, or at least not trying to become an expert at being online, then you better start. Because this technology is not going anywhere anytime soon.
Below is a full transcript of our interview. I have edited the transcript to make it grammatically correct and cut out any irrelevant statements.
Emily: Ok, so the first one is just like a broad overview, because I know that you’re an English major, I know that you’re doing secondary. Why did you choose to teach English and how do you think it affects your day-to-day life?
Hannah: Ok, well, I chose English because I think there’s a lot of value in being able to communicate your ideas effectively. And I think that there’s a lot of value in being able to connect with other people through a text. Like there’s a shared pool of information that we have and stories are the way that we communicate with each other and always have. And I think that through reading, there’s a lot that we can see about ourselves and we can learn about each other in our culture. And how do I think it affects my day to day life? Yeah. Well, I definitely read a lot more in my personal life, and I think about what I can learn from a text, and if I could give this to my students and see if there was anything that they could gain out of it.
EK: So for my second question, I wanted to know how this class was affecting your ideology for the classroom? Or if it is at all.
Hannah: What are some things we’ve talked about in this class, like what is?
EK: Well, I was thinking more in the sense of knowing who’s digitally literate and who’s not. As for me, this class has made me realize that they’re going to be students coming in who don’t have a computer at home. So they’re not going to know how to use Google Docs. And then you’re going to have students who are downloading outlines off of, you know, different chrome extensions because they’ve been using Chrome and Google Docs for years.
Hannah: Yeah. So I guess I guess through that lens, like in that sense, I guess it just makes me think that people have different ways that they like to use the Internet in different ways, that they like to express their own learning. So if you’re a teacher, you have to be open to those different mediums and willing to work with them and understand them and also provide a lot of different opportunities for students to express themselves differently.
EK: Yeah, so this next question. So I focused my questions from this point on how covid has affected our literacy. So the question is, do you use more digital literacy or paper literacy? Prior to COVID, which one did you see yourself using?
Hannah: More definitely paper. I was. I mean, OK, it’s a little different now because before I was using so much like papers up, of course, I was using some digital stuff for Google Docs. So some of my professors still wanted us to hand in a hard copy of things. And when I was reading just for fun, when I was reading in my personal life, I would get a Kindle. And so I was reading a lot on an E-reader. But now I have a book subscription and I read a lot more paper books now because I do everything online.
Emily: Interesting. So you like, flipped it.
Hannah: Yeah, I completely flip-flopped in my personal life and my school life.
EK: I want to know, like, how often did you use online resources before covid?
Hannah: I would say that I use them about the same amount as online resources. Do you mean like if I’m doing research or like school stuff or do you mean like services?
Emily: Well, like doing research for projects where you handwrite notes comparatively to like typing them up on Google Docs or just having them on Oaks at this point.
Hannah: So I would say that I was doing a little bit more research with physical copies of things. I had this one, you know, like English 299 class where we had to do this big research paper. So I had a lot of physical copy books that you can only get to the library. But as far as notes, I’ve been taking my notes on Google Docs for a couple of semesters. But this semester I started using a different note-taking thing. It’s called Knowshon and I sort of like that a lot better. But as far as other readings and research and stuff, it’s been a lot more online.
EK: My next question was, what types of digital literacy are enjoyable to you in comparison to the types you have to use to get work done?
Hannah: So I would say. I’m taking this super literally, but it’s just like in my own life, like I do a lot of reading, like that’s like my s-t. But I, I think ebooks I’ve been really loving audiobooks, like really loving audiobooks because you can change the speed and you can just like throw them on whenever you’re doing something. So you get a lot of reading done that way. So I think that’s super enjoyable. And also, you know, e-books are pretty great, except I don’t use them as much anymore, but. I don’t know, I mean, I think Zoom, I’ve even started using Zoom to sort of just like talking to some of my friends, like especially if I’m like, Oh my God. Like, you need to see this thing that I just said and so you can screen share. Sure. Like if I need help with a paper and I ask one of my friends like I do that instead of face time and I use face time a lot like I FaceTime people more now than I ever have. I mean, because we can’t be in person. Yeah, I know. And so I always face-timing like my mom and my grandma and like one of my friends. I don’t know because, you know, a lot of people really hate face time, but I don’t mind if I love FaceTime.
EK: My next question was, did you always know that digital literacy was happening, or have you, like, taken more notice of it since taking the class?
Hannah: I think I’ve definitely taken more notice of it since starting the class, even though it’s one of those things where I kind of knew what was happening, I took the I don’t know if you know about the library, one of five classes. Yeah, I took that. So I kind of had a sense of digital literacy because, in that class, it teaches you how to use research databases and how-to, you know. Yeah. Stuff online and like to navigate sources and stuff. So I kind of had an idea of it and like, you know, figuring out how to organize my notes when I would do Google Docs and stuff. But ever since taking the class and like using a different note-taking thing where I have to I mean, you’re essentially coding your notes. Yeah. Because it’s like you create the format by doing things like slash. It’s like the WordPress thing. You’ll slash each one too, and that’s how you come up with the headings. So I would say I’m definitely more aware of it now. That’s a very roundabout way of saying kind of no, but I like to explain it.
EK: Yeah totally. What was the most difficult part of becoming digitally literate during covid having to do it really quickly?
Hannah: I was an orientation intern over the summer and we had to do orientation online and none of us knew how to use Zoom. You know, in the spring when we did like crisis learning, essentially I didn’t have to do Zoom for any of my classes. So everybody was kind of figuring out how to use it. I mean, a lot of people still don’t get it, a lot of people still don’t know how to use it. But I had told our older students, yeah, for sure. They just don’t like even if you go into a class, they’re still confused about how to use it and like breakout rooms. Oh, my God. People with the breakout rooms, they hate them so much and they’re so awkward and they don’t talk. But it’s I mean, I just think it’s not a big deal. But for orientation, we had to do a Zoome training. And it was only a couple of days before we started and I was nervous. I was like, I don’t know how to do so. I’m like, I don’t know how to host things and stuff. So I had to do it really. Really quickly.
Emily: Yeah, yeah, that’s kind of what I was expecting the answer to be because that’s what my answer was to you having to pick up on everything super quickly. So I’m happy with that answer. I’m glad to hear that someone else had that issue. And then we’re onto the last question. And this question was, how do you think that covid-19 will affect digital literacy not only around the world but in the classroom?
Hannah: I think that it’s going to be a much, much bigger part of. Everything, but especially in the classroom, I think we’re going to be seeing I’m talking like I’m an expert, but I think we’re going to be seeing a lot more online classes, especially for college. I think we’re going to be seeing a lot more online classes. And I think they’re going to stick around now that people know that they’re not, they’re not that bad. I mean, I’m not going to lie to you like. Things are kind of rough this semester, but it’s not solely because of online classes like the classes themselves are finding, they’re manageable. And so I think that people are realizing that and realizing how convenient it can be. So I think we’re going to see a lot of that. And I think that teachers have had to incorporate a lot of new technology and a lot of just different things. I mean, they’ve had to get creative with the technology. And I think that that has opened a lot of doors. I think there’s probably going to be even more innovation with the like, especially in the classroom. You know, it’s probably going to accelerate. Like educational technology.
Emily: That’s what I thought, too, in this way. It’ll be interesting to see how what we’ve had to backpedal on because of covid will actually create innovation in the future.
Hannah: Yeah, and I’m also really interested to see this is kind of tangential, but like when we go back, you know, like when we say a new normal, I think they’re not kidding. Like, things are never going to be the way that they were, like, ever.