What?
The Office of Teaching and Learning (OTL) conducted “I Wish…” interviews with five DU students to gain insight into their experience during the emergency response to the COVID-19 pandemic. At the heart of this project is understanding what students wish faculty knew about their experiences. The OTL will be releasing two interviews in this blog and three in a follow-up blog in the coming weeks. The OTL hopes these narratives provide space for the student voice and will help us understand areas of success and growth. We strongly believe in the importance of the student experience in informing our work as we all prepare for future hyflex teaching.
Why?
COVID-19 brought about a challenging transition to emergency distance learning. Many of our faculty and students had to move quickly to respond to such an abrupt change. All have worked hard to adjust. In order to better understand how these changes are affecting students, we have gathered a selection of DU scholars to obtain their perspective on online learning.
How?
The OTL contacted faculty to suggest students they thought would be willing to share their perspective. We contacted the students via email to give an overview of the process including the questions that we were asking the students to answer.
The questions were:
- Where are you now and in what context are you learning in?
- What is your favorite part of online learning?
- What do you wish your faculty did to better support your online learning?
The OTL’s two graduate assistants scheduled time to meet with them to record their story.
Key Takeaways:
The two students we meet this week talk about the challenges of being at home with family and limited bandwidth. They also discuss the positive impact distance learning has had on access to professors.
Sophie is a second-year undergraduate student studying Theater and Strategic Communications. She is currently living at home with her family, which has brought about new challenges such as crowded Zoom areas and lower internet bandwidth. Although this quarter brought challenges, she feels that being able to re-watch recorded lectures and increased availability of professors has been helpful throughout her distance learning experience.
Devon is an undergraduate second-year Film and Production major. She is enjoying being back home in Evergreen with her family. She misses the “hustle and bustle” and community culture of the DU campus but has been enjoying her online learning experience. Devon likes that group projects have been working out better than expected and that her professors have been doing a great job keeping in touch with her and her classmates.
