University students in Ontario struggle with online classes as COVID pandemic continues | The Canadian News

TORONTO – Breanna Reid-Clarke has attended all of her college classes from her bedroom over the past two years and it takes a toll.

Studying away from home because of the pandemic has meant you feel isolated, and has brought with it challenges to build strong bonds with colleagues and instructors, the 21-year-old says.

Now, even as universities make plans for students to return gradually over the next month, some like Reid-Clarke say they are not hopeful that their post-secondary experiences can be reversed.

“My school experience (was) basically taken away from me… so it’s frustrating,” says Reid-Clarke, who studies politics and management at Ryerson University in Toronto.

“I do not really hope that everything will return, and if it does return, I just feel that things will just be closed again.”

Post-secondary institutions moved learning online when the pandemic hit and a return to campus that began in September was suspended when the Omicron variant arrived late last year. Many universities have now said they plan a phased return to personal education in the coming weeks.

Reid-Clarke says the uncertainty surrounding her school schedule over the past two years has made it difficult to plan not only her academic activities, but also her shifts working at a retail store and a student association.

“We do not really know what we are constantly doing. And we also have that pressure from our employers to almost know what we are doing, ”she says. “It just makes things really, honest, annoying and difficult.”

Erfan Nouraee, a second-year electrical engineering student at York University, hopes the return to campus will take place.

He says he needs access to university labs and equipment to do his research, noting that distance education has slowed some of his work.

“It was very challenging for me to find a place to work on my inventions and projects,” he says. “I was really unsure about _ what do I really need to do in the future? Do I have to stop all my work for the year ahead?”

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York University was among several post-secondary schools that recently announced a phased return to campus that will begin on January 31st. The University of Toronto and Waterloo University meanwhile said classes and activities on campus will begin resuming on February 7th.

Ryerson University said it will begin a gradual return on Jan. 31, with a full return expected by Feb. 28.

“I hope many of you will welcome this return and see it as an opportunity to embark on a post-pandemic way of living, learning and working,” Ryerson President Mohamed Lachemi said in a letter to students last week. writing.

Kelly Gallagher-Mackay, an assistant professor at Wilfrid Laurier University who researched educational experiences during the pandemic, says online learning works better for some and is less successful for others.

Going to university is more than just academic, she says, and online learning that has taken place so far has deprived students of some of the personal experiences that come with campus.

“They do not go out for a coffee to class, they do not take kind of what they learned in the classroom and go to social life with other students,” she says. “There are great lost opportunities for peer learning, for socialization.”

Educators also feel the impact, she says.

Gallagher-Mackay says she got to know students she taught personally much better than those she taught online.

“It was just a small handful of students who rarely turn on the cameras (who) I know well enough to write a reference letter for,” she says.

“I knew many of my personal students well enough to talk informally… or get an idea of ​​what their interests were, why they take our program, all that kind of stuff. And that two-way knowledge leads to students being more likely to seek help from their professors when they need it. ”

Kristina Llewellyn, an associate professor of social development studies at the University of Waterloo, says distance education has exacerbated inequality issues, exacerbating some students from communities seeking equality when studying from home.

“It’s everything from basic internet access to the time it takes for online learning when juggling full-time work or other care responsibilities,” she says.

“We know that there is great inequality when it comes to who should juggle, for example during the pandemic, a full-time job in addition to their learning.”

The pandemic also exacerbated mental health issues that many college students had, she says.

“There are not enough strong resources happening on university campuses to address students’ mental health concerns,” she says. “We need to ensure that those resources are put in place now and post-pandemic.”