The time after graduating leads to a lot of reflection. Lately I've been thinking a lot about past classes, good professors, not so good professors, failures on my part, and all the fun experiences had during my time at Temple University. But the one thing that I've been thinking about the most during these unprecedented times is; how the *redacted* do you study during a pandemic?
That question is very intriguing to me. On one hand I understand if a student has certain academic goals set for their self. Some may feel that shutting down and neglecting all scholarly activities would be counterproductive in the long run. Which is an understandable perspective. But on the other hand, why even bother? Now I'm not saying students should do absolutely nothing and that they should actively fail their classes because there's a pandemic. But I am definitely sympathetic to those that may feel that they cannot give 100% towards school. Doing that during normal circumstances can be difficult.
The immediate shock of everything certainly did not help students or faculty on that front either. A lot of colleges were struggling to meet the need to quickly change to online learning in March, and that certainly added to the disarray for students. An article by the Economic Policy Institute states that,
"...weak systems of support, including lack of professional development on how to integrate computers into instruction, have left teachers less than optimally equipped to teach during the pandemic."
Emma Garcia and Elaine Weiss: COVID-19 and Student Performance, Equity, and U.S. Education Policy
I had a few teachers in my final semester that struggled with technology during our online transition, and the quality of education was certainly impacted. I imagine schools have improved how they handle online learning since the emergency transition; but is the quality of education now still justifying tuition costs? Students may not think so. One of the most popular questions my peers had during our online transition was "would there be refunds?". And that was a common feeling across the country. Many people were interested in tuition refunds in early March of 2020 and the popularity of that search term is supported by the data from Google Trends.
As we progressed through the semester I became more and more annoyed at the expectation from my professors to give 100% on assignments. I remember professors commenting about poor class scores on exams and assignments without acknowledgment of what was, and is going on. It all felt wildly out of touch.
Students Missing Out on Job Opportunities
My classmates and I were certainly feeling uneasy about where we would stand post graduation, and as a result felt less motivated about our studies. Many of my peers, who were also graduating seniors, had lost full time offers for jobs in their desired fields because of the economic uncertainty. I had also lost out on a full time opportunity as a result of the uncertainty. My peers and I were certainly right to not feel optimistic about the world we were graduating into.
There are roughly 12.6 million Americans who are unemployed, but if we consider those who are underemployed due to loss of hours because of Covid-19 then that number is closer to 30 million people. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the national unemployment rate in November was 6.7%.
www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf
Nearing the time of my graduation, the national unemployment rates in April and May were 14.7% and 13% respectively. Pretty bleak, especially for new graduates. But what kind of impact do the consequences of a pandemic have on grades?
How Does a Pandemic Impact a College Students Grades?
A survey conducted by OneClass during the Fall 2020 semester reported that 85.4% of surveyed college students saw a negative impact on their academic performance. This is particularly interesting because by the time of Fall 2020, online learning was not as much of a shock change as it was in Spring 2020. Students were familiar with online learning by the fall however they still had problems adapting.
Potentially unrelated but an interesting trend, the search popularity for Chegg, online source for textbooks and other school related things, saw a spike in popularity during the 'peak' of COVID-19 in March and April 2020. Compared to 2019, Chegg saw nearly twice as much search popularity in March and April.
This could be due to more online textbooks being assigned, students becoming more reliant on Chegg for answers, or a myriad of different reasons. Chegg was not the only educational site to see an uptick in popularity during the early stages of the pandemic. Khan Academy also saw a similar increase in search popularity. Another site that saw nearly double the search popularity compared to March and April of 2019.
Again this could be for a variety of possibilities, but there is good reason to believe that students were trying to make use of online resources.
Learning in a Pandemic
Now for the title of this post; how does a college student study during a pandemic? My answer, I don't have the slightest clue. I have a lot of respect for students who are determined to see this through. And I have a lot of sympathy for those who are struggling through school right now. This has been a pretty awful year, so I could not blame a student for underperforming academically. Things seem, and are, pretty bleak
What was the most helpful thing for me during my final semesters was student collaboration. Working together with classmates can really help students out with learning material. Having classmates you can work with on assignments or develop study guides with can be really useful especially when exams approach. The most comprehensive and thorough study guides I have ever used were always made with student collaboration. Seeing how multiple people approach a problem can help give you new perspectives on how to approach things. And it's great preparation for how to collaborate in the working world. However, building those collaborative spaces for students may be a bit more difficult with everything being online now. But I would encourage students to reach out to their classmates and try and create study groups and share resources.
Hopefully we can partake in an everyday that's like our pre-COVID lives, but until then we must stay patient. And if you know a student who is dealing with online learning, go easy on them.
Thank you for reading! I hope you stay safe and healthy!