Hi my name is Megan, I’m a 2nd year medical student and this is my SSC2b blog focused on my experience of online learning.
One of the massive changes that COVID-19 has brought to my life is how I get my education. By that, I mean the introduction of online learning. Students are well aware of the drawbacks that online learning brings and I’m sure that non students will also be aware of at least some of them. However, in this article I thought I’d focus on some of the positives it brings, as every cloud has a silver lining (cheesy).
It’s all about comfort
Okay, I’ll start off with by far my favourite benefit online learning brings and that is: COMFORT. For almost a year now, I have been exclusively wearing sweatpants and I have never been comfier. Now I’m not saying we should all lounge about in pjs, I’ve heard that’s not a good move if you want to feel productive. However, you currently don’t have to wear a tight button-up shirt, a skirt with tights, or anything else that makes you feel constricted.
Pause and rewind
My next benefit may be slightly controversial, but I think online learning has actually helped in the way you can study. With online learning you can take things at your own pace, If you’re finding part of the lecture hard, you can pause, and rewind that lecture as many times as you like. Sadly, such an option does not exist in real life.
Tailor-made learning
You can also tailor online learning to your own study approach! I know everyone studies differently – some people like to write or type up all their notes, draw diagrams but I love flash cards and find them the easiest way to study. So, I’m really enjoying online learning this year as I can take the time to go through each of the lectures and type up legible notes on quizlet, instead of rushing them when I’m in person and then being confused by my half-written answers when I get home.
Flexibility is key
Flexibility is another helpful aspect I’ve found with online learning. Lectures are set out for you to do daily, but you can work these into a schedule that suits you. Pre-COVID your lectures would be set at a specific time and you could either go to them at this time or miss out (well they would also be recorded but sometimes if you were unlucky half of the talk would’ve been left out of the recording). However, now if you have an exercise class, a society meeting or you simply want to go to Lidl at a time where it’s not completely queued out the door, you can easily work around this.
New formats, from transcripts to podcasts
Something else I’ve found useful about online learning is that lecturers are taking advantage of this new way to work and providing new and useful formats to get across their material. Simple lectures slides with audio are still the go-to, however some videos with accompanying slides and a word document of the transcripts have stated to appear. I never knew I wanted lectures to have transcripts until I was given one and it’s so handy!
Sometimes when listening to a lecturer you may miss some words due to rustling of papers or issues with the mic and sometimes I just can’t understand what they’re saying, so it’s pretty handy to be able to look at the document and see what part you’ve missed instead of replaying parts of the lecture. As well as producing transcripts, some lecturers have really branched out and started doing podcasts. They have the same content as the lectures but are explained in a different way to benefit your learning.
These are a few of the things I have liked about the move to online learning and hopefully this article has reminded you it’s not all doom and gloom. However, fingers crossed we can all be back in a lecture theatre again soon, with COVID well and truly in the past.
