On March 8, when provincial health officer Bonnie Henry said that post-secondary institutions can and should prepare for a full return to in-person learning in September, I was a bit put out. I was conflicted.
I checked my sources, did some digging to make sure this was, in fact, what she had said.
It’s true. It’s time for students to get back to campus. We’re all feeling it. It’s just time. Right? Simple. No, it’s not.
Sure, I miss Camosun. I miss smiling faces, and lots of spaces; I miss all the people in hallways, seeing stacks of textbooks spread out over picnic tables in the courtyard, and watching that one slightly disheveled individual who always shows up late to class. But in order for us to get in a room with 30 other people, we need to trust them. It’s fact, and it’s instinct.
Aside from the logistics of a return to campus and the vaccine rollout, there’s now COVID-19 variants to be concerned about, not to mention trying to figure out what students should do when that perpetually runny nose and cough returns in the fall.
Then there’s the little matter of our trust in other people being completely shattered over the past year.
Day in and day out, we’ve been told that COVID-19 will kill us. We’ve been told to stay apart, that other people are hosts and that isolation is good. I want to know how we’re going to trust each other again, and I want to know what class sizes at Camosun will be. I also want to know if the college is going to pay, say, three more instructors to teach to account for smaller class sizes, because I don’t think anyone can imagine classrooms stuffed full of students at this point. Granted, we couldn’t ever have imagined any of this, so anything is possible.
At best, students are nervous about returning. At worst, students don’t want to go to campus. Because of the virus, yes, but also because of something else we’ve learned over the past year: it’s a waste of time, to some extent. Up at 7 am, shower, eat, get changed, pack a lunch, drive up to school; pay for parking, climb stairs, and arrive at class vaguely sweaty, anxious, and most definitely late. Oh, and that lunch you packed? You forgot it, but you can pay too much for some egg-like mush if you like.
Online learning allows you to use that morning rush time to study, go for a run, or sleep.
Either way, us students have to take what we get. If registration opened in two weeks for the fall semester and online options filled up fast, there wouldn’t be much we could do, because—as this pandemic has proven—one way or another, we need an education. But there’s an opportunity here for the college, instructors, and students to get the best of both worlds. Enough online options and enough in-person options for those disciplines that truly suffer online could result in a semester unlike any other as far as student success rates.
Of the six post-secondary students I’ve spoken to about this, three have implied they want a mix of online and in-person options in the fall, one has said she can’t learn online, and two have said they won’t return to campus until it’s completely normal again (see you in 2055).
It comes down to students and staff having the opportunity to pick a learning or teaching style that works for them. A full return to campus without learning from some new possibilities brought on by the pandemic would be a mistake.
As a person who has supported faculty and students moving online through this past year, I encourage students to make their voices heard to the Student Association, to Deans, to faculty – let the college know what you want and why. Many faculty also want to continue offering flexible options for students, and now we know what can be done!