Learning Environment
Duke 2020/2021 academic semester has taken an unexpected turn. As many students were introduced and forced into a new learning environment. Due to the impact of Covid-19, and new safety protocols that were enforced by Duke causing many classes & students to online learning, also causing many studying spaces on campus to not be available or very limited space. With these new changes emerges a new terrain students have to face as the landscape of ideal classroom has change. I tend to investigate how theses changes may have affected or impacted students during their semester. How I’ll conduct my work is through series of interview of undergraduates who are currently enrolled at Duke. Photo & Sound ethnography to get different and certain perspective.
RaKavius Chamber
Who was a former teammate of mine and a senior that’s graduating after this semster. Rak has played football for Duke all four years of being here and is majoring in biology. Over his cereer, he has accomplish many accolades as well, some examples of those are being a candidate for the wuerffel Trophy. An award presented annually to the FBS player who best combined exemplary community service with athletic and academic achievement. Also he was a candidate for the Allstate AFCA Good Works Team which recognized excellence in community service. Reason I choose him to be my interviewee was with him having a successful academic life at duke, I thought I would get a lot of good insights of how covid affected a student life.
Q- Due to Covid shutting class down for a week, how did that affect the class?
A- We had an in person lab schedule, and we we can’t no longer do that so we was given data to analyze so it’s not the same as like actual completing a lab yourself, you get more out of learning it and doing the work yourself than if you do if some else did the work and you analyze some numbers.
Q- What were classes before Covid like for you?
A- Before Covid everyone was able to go into labs, and everybody was able to do their own work and work in pairs, it was a much more collaborative experience, and now everyone just goes into a lab, each person working by themselves so I guess it takes little of the fun out of collaborative work, and so when your not able to collaborate with another person so of takes the fun out of learning.
In this video, I ask students to answer two question:
What one thing you like/dislike about Online Learning?
What one thing you like/dislike about your new learning space?
the Results are in
Conclusion
Through my analysis I was able to discover challenges students faced that were presented by the changing circumstances in their learning environment. One challenge that presented itself was that student felt isolated. As many students were stuck to a single location to conduct going to class and do schoolwork. Some found it beneficial to have everything in one place, but many found it difficult as they felt unmotivational with the situation. Specially with students staying on campus as many feel living on campus you come for the face to face social interaction. Another challenge many students faced was being easily distracted. As many students are in a location that’s very personal to them, they find it hard to concrete as there are many distraction that surround them.
What Covid has revealed is that face to face social interaction between students and teachers is important. Many students who were interviewed said they long the interaction they had when they had in-person classes. Reason its important for them is that it gives them motivation and support in their academic life.
