Learning During COVID

The year 2020 has changed the way we interact with each other. We went from seeing gatherings as mundane events to moving to online spaces to live our everyday lives. This is no different when it comes to how we approach learning. Education can be inaccessible to the working-class, and the pandemic has been exacerbating a prevalent problem in our society. Some may think that the covid pandemic has forced us to find innovative ways to approach education, which is partially true; we've found ways to adapt rather quickly to the situation, which involved sophisticated ways to interact online - such as zoom, discord, among others. However, online learning is inherently inaccessible to working-class students because we live in a system designed to make a profit rather than ensure people's well-being.

Positives of Online Learning

A significant benefit of online learning has been the time that can be saved in commuting to schools. I personally have benefitted from this. It has allowed me to sleep more hours and spend less time on public transportation; it has made it slightly less stressful as a working student to get to work and school. As innovative as online learning may seem, this is the extent of the benefits of forced online learning during covid.

The situation at the City Univesity of New York and Why Online Learning is Not Accessible.

Many students don't have the resources, including time, to meet the demands of the CUNY administration and professors. CUNY is a primarily working-class institution, which means most students need to work to survive. Many students are nontraditional, which means they may have families to take care of and feed. About 55% of CUNY students are house insecure, and about 48% are food insecure. The pandemic has been immensely challenging for those who were already financially struggling. Students might be forced to work more hours just to provide for their families or themselves.

For many students, their home is not a suitable place to learn. Some families do not have consistent access to the internet. Other students may not be able to afford their own laptops and relied on school desktops to complete their work. Students who are fortunate enough to have a laptop may now be forced to share it with siblings or parents working from home. Some homes can be chaotic, and for some students, a quiet place where they can focus on their class is non-existent.

Social and Emotional Aspect of Online Learning

Covid and quarantine have also created a new set of emotional challenges. Seeing my friends on campus each day gave me something to look forward to and served as a support system for stressful times. While I can text and facetime my friends, it does not provide the same happiness level as seeing them in person. Furthermore, activities I enjoyed and looked forward to, such as going to the movies, traveling, and going to events in large groups, are no longer a possibility, and it is unclear when or if they will be an option again. Losing such meaningful social activities would impact anyone's mental health. While the stressful aspects of life still exist, our options for coping with this stress are pretty limited.

Furthermore, we live under the constant threat of us or a loved one catching a painful and deadly virus. The fear and anxiety of catching covid can make it challenging to do the basic tasks required to be a good student. The new economic challenges of covid also make it challenging to be an attentive student. How can one write an essay or take notes during class if their parents have covid or if they are on the verge of being evicted?

Some people indeed choose to get their degrees online. Online learning is not new. However, the way in which everyone became an online student is a unique situation. There's a significant difference between pre-existing online classes and our online classes: we didn't choose it. All the students that were forced into online learning did not make a conscious effort to have online courses. Online courses have made the already tricky life students lead even more challenging; online courses have been isolating in many ways, and the pandemic has only made things worse.