Descriptive writing on Experience of Virtual class during pandemic
Answers
I woke up an hour late Wednesday morning, and by the time I had thrown on a sweatshirt, prepared my glass of Emergen-C, and logged onto Zoom, my class had been going on for 15 minutes. The night before I had taken cough syrup for my seasonal cold, and this was the first day my school switched to virtual instruction. Over the course of the three-hour workshop, I noticed my puffy eyes on the panel of faces and became self-conscious. I turned off my video. I became distracted with the noise of sirens outside and muted my speaker, only to then realize: by the time you’re done muting-and-unmuting, the right moment to join the conversation has already passed. I found myself texting on my computer, stepping away to make coffee, running to the bathroom, writing a couple e-mails, and staring at my classmate’s dog in one of the video panels. I don’t think my experience is unique; I imagined similar situations playing out in virtual offices and classrooms across the world.
The quick turn to platforms like Zoom is disrupting curricula, particularly for professors less equipped to navigate the internet and the particularities of managing a classroom mediated by a screen and microphone. I had professors cancel class because they had technical difficulties, trouble with WiFi, or were simply panicked over the prospect of teaching the full class over the new platform. With university IT services focusing efforts on providing professors with how-to webinars on using online platforms, individual student needs for these same services have been placed on hold.
However, the reality is that some subjects are much harder to transfer online. A biochemistry or introductory economics lecture is easier to teach virtually than a music or dance class. The creation of a film or theatrical production requires physical bodies in close proximity. Even in my creative writing workshop, responding to a colleagues’ memoir about her mother’s death is hard to do without looking her in the eye. The screen creates an emotional remove that makes it difficult to have back-and-forth dialogue between multiple people, and it’s almost impossible to provide thoughtful feedback without feeling like you’re speaking into a void.
A large part of this can be attributed to accountability. Online classes require significantly more motivation and attention. I found it difficult to focus on a pixelated video screen when I could browse the internet on my computer, text on my phone, watch TV in the background, have one hand in the pantry, or just lay comfortably in my bed. The problem, too, is that webinar technology doesn’t quite live up to the hype. Noise and feedback—rustling papers, ambulances, kettles, wind—make it impossible to hear people talk, and so everyone is asked to mute their microphones.
But muting your audio means you can’t jump into a conversation quickly. The “raise hand” function often goes unnoticed by teachers and the chat box is distracting. Sometimes the gallery view just doesn’t work, so you’re stuck staring at your own face or just two of your eighteen classmates. It also means another hurdle for those who hesitate to speak up, even in the best of circumstances. It means you’re just one click away from turning off your camera and being totally off the hook. In an online class over the summer, I once watched a woman—who forgot her camera was still on, though she was muted—vacuum her entire kitchen and living room during a seminar.
In educational settings, creativity is arguably one of the most important things at stake. The surprises and unexpected interactions fuel creativity—often a result of sitting in a room brushing shoulders with a classmate, running into professors in a bathroom line, or landing on ideas and insights that arise out of discomfort in the room. This unpredictability is often lost online.
The COVID-19 pandemic will likely continue presenting challenges beyond those that come up in the course of routine virtual education. Even if this viral spread subsides, or a vaccination becomes readily available, the shift from online classes back to in-person learning may create disruptions of its own—adjusting back to higher standards of accountability, weaning off of phone-checking habits, and transferring comments back to hard copies instead of digital notes. Hopefully, these phases of trouble shooting can provide universities, professors and students the opportunity to practice adaptability, patience and resilience. And hopefully, these experiences will serve as preparation for future challenges that come with the next epidemic, pandemic and other disaster.
For now, I am trying to not look at myself in the gallery of faces, stop being distracted by my expressions, resisting the impulses to check my phone or e-mail, or at least recognize these urges when they arise.
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