MS Journalism: SMIC Students and Teachers "Grade" Online Learning

Posted: 25/05/2020

By: Tim Luo, Carrie Pan, and Henrik You

WHAM! The disease struck Earth. People screamed and screamed, and they all died out. Well, in reality, it’s not quite like that. It’s more like this. WHAM! The disease struck Earth. COVID-19 is its name. It struck with force and power, and everything shut down. Students started taking all their classes online, but one question remained: “Which is better: online or traditional classes?” Let’s take a look.

This year, the COVID-19 pandemic sent the world into panic; schools shut down, and governments worldwide discouraged people from going out. Because of this, many schools around the world, including SMIC, turned to another type of learning: online learning. Due to COVID-19, there have been lots of changes to the SMIC community that have affected both students and teachers. Rather than going to campus and learning like before, students have been learning on a computer all day. In this new type of learning, teachers and students communicate not face-to-face, but using electronic devices. What do students think about this?

Leo Yu from E7 thinks that online learning is good, or even better than, traditional learning. “Online learning is cool and [does] not waste time.” He added that the new system “made us more free than in school. Also, the classes are shorter, which is great!” But not everyone thinks this way. E8 Rebecca Li has a negative opinion about online learning. “Online learning is not good,” she said. “It’s hard to keep up and easy to forget.” She also added that students can get easily distracted during online learning. Teachers also have varying opinions about online learning.

Teacher Christian Chavez said that traditional learning is best for students because it is helpful for them and they are able to pay more attention to the class. He said the main drawback of online learning is that it reduces face-to-face contact with students, which means it is harder to help them when they need support in using online learning. Ultimately, Teacher Christian said that going back to traditional learning will help students most because that way they will see and work with their friends, which is really important in this community.

Despite the challenges of online learning, teachers and students have both learned a lot from this pandemic. Teacher Christian has learned that students can make annotations to Zoom meetings, which is fun to watch. Furthermore, students have learned a lot about technology and have developed independence by having class at home.

Teachers and students all have different perspectives about what type of learning is better. Regardless of what they prefer though, everyone has made the best of a challenging situation, and middle school students will be able to return to school on June 1st. Farwell, loyal readers! We hope you all stay happy and safe during this COVID-19 pandemic!