WE are living in the strangest of times. No one was prepared for what 2020 had installed for us. Especially students who are trying to finish off their studies and matrics who are finishing off their high school careers. The covid-19 pandemic has disrupted a lot of things, people’s plans, movements, sporting world, the entertainment industry and most importantly, the academic calendar.
My heart goes out to people who need or needed one year to complete something. Final-year university students probably dreamt of a year that has no hiccups, that would see them achieve their goals at the end of the year.
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Post-graduate students definitely cannot afford this kind of disruption – the research and other factors of their studies are in jeopardy.
Matriculants probably won’t have a second term and their next set of testing could be the daunting task of writing trials and we all know how difficult those are.
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One thing many of us have struggled with during this lockdown is staying productive. I don?t know what the psychological reasons are behind this, but it?s safe to say that we’re all freaking out a little bit over the uncertainty of the remainder of the year and how it affects our next two years or so.
I’m grateful that I’m not a student during a time like this, all my time would be spent on Netflix and chilling. A lot of institutions have the means and the students who are able to continue their studies online, whether it?s by having video, calling classes on Zoom or communicating on Blackboard.
I took to Instagram again, to ask university students about their online learning experience:
Kiara Dandridge: (Final year student): The experience hasn’t been horrible but there is a level of misunderstanding and miscommunication, as well as bad connection.
Amber Holmes: (Post-grad student): It took a while for lecturers and students to get used to the new platforms. I feel like the lecturers are forced to have more structured lesson plans. They send lesson plans ahead of time now, so we can prepare properly. It’s actually a constructive lesson. They also save our online lectures so that we can go back and listen which is helpful.
Ross Ford: When it comes to application based studies like, stats, accounting and finance – we have learning units, so when we go from learning unit 4 to 5, we?re expected to understand the previous learning unit. In class it was easier to ask for help for older learning units. It also helps when lecturers are online savvy.
Caxton Local Media Covid-19 reporting
Dear reader,
As your local news provider, we have the duty of keeping you factually informed on Covid-19 developments. As you may have noticed, mis- and disinformation (also known as “fake news”) is circulating online. Caxton Local Media is determined to filter through the masses of information doing the rounds and to separate truth from untruth in order to keep you adequately informed. Local newsrooms follow a strict pre-publication fact-checking protocol. A national task team has been established to assist in bringing you credible news reports on Covid-19.
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