Adventures in Online Classes

With the world being shut down suddenly and schools, theatres, malls etc being closed we had to come up with solutions to fix these problems. And unfortunately for schools, we came up with online classes. Online classes are school but all the fun aspects of it removed. Online classes focus entirely on academics (as expected), and as a result, become tiresome and often monotonous. (In case you’re wondering, yes this is a rant.) To me, online classes are rather depressing a lot of the times as:

1. We cannot interact with our classmates.
2. By the time your mic unmutes, the teacher’s already gone far ahead.
3. If your net is bad, you can barely hear the teacher.
4. However hard teachers try, eventually, learning through a screen ends up one-sided.
5. We’re alone and locked up in our houses, thus we have no outlet (ESPECIALLY when your school goes on for 5 hours and gives you regular projects and homework EVEN THOUGH schools are supposed to go on for only 3 hours online).

So, the baseline is that online classes suck. Completely. In these times when kids have no real outlet and are continually in an almost depressing environment, keeping school for only 3-4 hours wouldn’t hurt would it? 

In fact, I feel that my interest in learning has gone down because I have to do everything over and over to really comprehend what was taught in class. After all, the learning and teaching structure is still the same as it would be if we were learning in person(which we’re not). Learning in a classroom is much easier because the amount of distractions is so much less compared to learning online, and thus, you learn better when you’re able to listen to the teacher in person. What I mean by that is that I’m not learning much online. It has hindered my ability to understand and retain information.

Another thing I wanted to mention was that, in the beginning, I would sincerely join the classes at the exact time given but a month and a half later, my will to join on time and be punctual just vaporized. Not to mention that time no longer has any meaning. 

Of course, there are a couple of good things about it too, for example, the travel time has been cut down to zero, so now I can sleep in for thirty extra minutes. Not to mention the increased number of pranks that people can play on their teachers. However, you have to pay attention to the teacher so that you don’t end up answering ‘mitochondria’ when the question was ‘Who led the French revolution?’ 

Online courses have lots of advantages, but we also need to recognize their limitations. Students sometimes get frustrated due to the lack of human contact and an inability to discuss it with their classmates. Sometimes, the online world, no matter how boundless it may be, can become too small for the student and they may need a physical space where they can resolve their queries and practice with real tools.

_{I do not own any of the images in this article.}