Students and lecturers protest online learning

A crowd of staff and students gathered outside the college to protest changes to how we in the college would do our learning, shifting from an in-person model of education to a distance learning model using zoom calls and making students work from home. 

Both students and lecturers consider this to be a bad idea. While the protest only lasted about an hour it had a strong turnout. 

One student protesting said: “College management want to change the way we learn by reducing class time in person and moving it online to cut money. 

“I do a diploma course in connection with Strathclyde and it is heavy going. Last year was an absolute disaster to learn online, this year has been better because it's been in person. 

“If it's just going to be online, I would just ask people not to come here.” 

This anti-online-learning sentiment is common among students and lecturers. According to the 2021 Student Academic experience survey only twelve percent of UK university students were in favour of online learning as a primary teaching method. According to the same survey, 32% of students said that their online learning experience was of poor value. 

One student taking the survey said: “Online learning is extremely different to in person learning. Uni was great up until the pandemic hit, although I do still believe the fees were overpriced regardless.”  

Another student quoted the ‘expectations not met’ section and said: “I’m not too fond of the online learning and wasn’t expecting this post-pandemic”. 

Online learning also saw a decline in student mental health with one quoted student saying: “Think about student mental health. 

“Yes, there are counselling services in place, however with the impact of COVID I have seen a massive decline in my mental health and the mental health of everyone around me. 

“The staff are still expecting students to get work completed on time and to a high standard and very few are taking into consideration external factors that could impact student life.” 

Many feel online learning has been proven to be a poor option for private education. It produces a nosedive in not only the quality of education provided, but also the quality of the student experience. 

Speaking as a student myself, lockdown learning was disastrous for me, not only was the adjustment a slog to get through but not having a direct line to a lecturer also made the quality of my work suffer. 

It gives lecturers less options and students lower quality. 

We can only hope that the college listens to its students.