COVID-19 has upended conventional teaching and learning practices as everyone seeks to adapt to a new remote learning environment. We caught up with graduate students in the School of Biomedical Sciences and elsewhere to get their take on this new reality.
Karissa Becknel
Karissa Becknel is a second-year student in the Department of Physiology and VP Communications for the Graduate Association of Physiology.
Having taken an online biochemistry course over the summer, Ms. Becknel appreciated being able to study on her own schedule.
“I feel like remote learning is a great alternative to the traditional learning setting,” she said. “My teachers were great. They were very responsive and tried their best to increase student engagement on an online platform.”
She noted that her workload increased as more content was introduced to the syllabus to foster continuous learning.
“It forces you to manage your time better, and to perfect your learning/studying techniques,” she noted.
Kimberly Martins-Cannavino
Ms. Martins-Cannavino is in her second year as a Master’s candidate in the Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics and VP Communications for the Graduate Association of Pharmacology and Therapeutics Students (GAPTS).
“So far it has been quite a challenge,” Ms. Martins-Cannavino said of her remote learning experience thus far. “I’m still struggling to find a quiet workspace at home.”
“Although I can’t speak for my teachers, I know many of them are spending countless hours a day on Zoom,” she noted.
Ms. Martins-Cannavino appreciated the flexibility of being able to watch lecture recordings and the ability to pause or take breaks.
“This is especially helpful for students with learning disabilities or students who’s living arrangements aren’t always the best work environment,” she noted.
However, it has not been an easy road for Ms. Martins-Cannavino and others.
“Holding courses live via Zoom is quite tricky,” she says. “Your home isn’t always the best work environment and can often be filled with many interruptions and distractions. Along with Zoom fatigue, these can feel like extra barriers students now need to face when it comes to getting an education.”
Philippe Hwang
A second year student working on his Master’s of Psychiatry, Mr. Hwang is also co-president of the Student Association for Collaborative Mental Healthcare (CMH).
The CMH is a student-run group that seeks to encourage and improve collaboration between students in a wide range of disciplines that either interact with or directly work in mental healthcare (e.g. nursing, psychology, occupational therapy, social work, and many more).
“I feel that remote learning has been going overall well,” Mr. Hwang says of his experience thus far. “The transition to online platforms was a bit jarring but McGill was very supportive and seemed to offer a lot of resources to support the students and teachers to make the transition easier. As such, the delivery of online lectures went quite well. I have been lucky to be in classes that do not have midterms or finals which may have been more difficult in the current format, however.”
“There were some difficulties during the transition to remote learning at the start of the pandemic but the professors were very quick to work with the new technologies available and I only experienced some very minor issues largely technical with the delivery of the lectures,” he noted. “Otherwise, it seems like it has been difficult to conduct a lecture without the feedback that would normally be present with in-person learning but the professors are still delivering excellent lecture content.”
Mr. Hwang has also appreciated the time and stress saved by avoiding a daily commute along with the benefits of flexible learning through recorded video sessions.
“However, there is also a big loss of social interaction and networking that would normally be possible with in-person classes so while it has given more opportunities for productivity, there are a lot of lost opportunities as well.”
Anne-Sophie Pépin
Anne-Sophie Pépin is in the fifth year of her PhD program in the Department of Pharmacology & Therapeutics.
An active community member, Ms. Pépin is co-president of the Graduate Association of Pharmacology and Therapeutics Students (GAPTS), coordinator of the Win4Science (Women's initiative for Science) mentoring program, and leader of the Biomedical Interdisciplinary Student Association (BISA), which is currently being developed.
“I think it's going as well as it can go given the circumstances,” says Ms. Pépin of the remote learning experience. “Students promptly adapted to remote learning and have shown patience and resilience in this transition. Many must have faced different problems including suboptimal access to internet (especially when living with several roommates using zoom all at the same time!), but I think the university has provided quite a lot of support and solutions to ensure a smooth transition.”
“Professors have done a great job at adapting their teaching strategies and have put a lot of thoughts/efforts in doing so,” Ms. Pépin noted. “I have seen professors of different departments come together and help each other to adapt their course content, means of teaching (especially for ‘hands-on,’ practical courses, and to make sure that exams were fair. I was really impressed how all possible features of Zoom were exploited in the course I took.”
Remote learning allows for greater flexibility, Ms. Pépin said, with more time to keep her home in order while working. She appreciates not having the daily commute, along with the time saved as a result.
In terms of drawbacks, she notes that limited human interaction is far from ideal. Ms. Pépin expressed concern about disparities within the student population: women with young children, students with limited access to internet or computers, international students and others.