How students are balancing in-person and online learning

With in-person learning returning for students and faculty of Algonquin College’s Woodroffe campus, 61 programs currently have students attend Zoom classes as well as their in-person learning portions.

“I enjoy the flexibility of online classes, but enjoy the social and hands-on aspect of in-person classes,” said Tammi Lowans, a nursing student. “With online classes, there’s no need to travel to campus and with asynchronous lectures, you’re able to watch them at any time you want.”

Similarly to Lowans, Camille Ouellet is also enjoying her mixture of online and in-person learning. However, she prefers to make the trip to the college to attend her Zoom classes.

“It makes me feel like I’m in-person when I’m doing my classes at the campus, so it’s been fun overall,” Ouellet explained.

While students are taking zoom and in-person lessons, professors are not teaching both at the same time.

Heather Holbrook, a professor in the baking program, is currently only teaching a Zoom class, and in three weeks will be starting to teach in-person classes.

“The way they’ve got it is we don’t seem to be doing the same thing,” she said. “Somebody will teach the Zooms and then the other instructors are in doing labs, so we’re not doing it at the same time.”

With the multiple ways students learn at their own pace, veterinary assistant student, Jessica Rebet, prefers her in-person learning.

“I find it a lot easier to be in front of someone in learning rather than through your computer screen because I find I get very distracted when it’s over the computer,” she said.

Both Ouellet and Repet find the online learning portion more difficult than in-person and are happy in-person learning is back.

“Online classes are definitely very overwhelming because you have to be on yourself about those situations,” Ouellete said. “You have to be very organized and know what you have to do, so I definitely feel like online classes have been harder to organize myself with.”