
Stephanie Santos/The Cougar
It is no secret that the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns led to a rise of isolation and social distancing. During this time, teachers and students both learned the functional aspects of utilizing online resources, with AI chatbots emerging as a popular tool to navigate the digital landscape.
Classes shifted from the typical in-person coursework to fully online, leading to more synchronous and asynchronous classes. However, what was initially a means for drawing people together is only pulling people apart as things return to normal.
Four years later, students are given the choice of choosing face-to-face, synchronous online, asynchronous online or even hybrid instruction. What was meant to be an added mode of convenience, is discouraging peer-to-peer interactions.
Though online instruction does give students much more flexibility to explore other extracurricular opportunities, it also robs them of their chance to engage in meaningful discussions with their peers.
Unfortunately, the hard reality is that the weekly discussion posts are no replacement for means of deeper reflection. Virtual interactions and conversations tend to lack the personable qualities of direct communication.
Sure, meeting in breakout rooms and sending emails are efficient ways of completing a group project. But they’re not equivalent to the collaborative efforts in real time and the camaraderie that emerges from the struggle of working through a difficult task together in a face-to-face setting.
The extreme lack of emotional richness in these impersonal communications mediated by technology can make the online conversations very scripted and almost robotic.
Students get a lesser sense of each other’s personalities through the chat boxes in their synchronous virtual classes than they do when they crack jokes beside each other face-to-face.
Many students currently in online classes can attest to experiencing lack forming connections with other students in the same classes, simply because they have never actually met them or directly conversed with them.
Commuter students especially spend much less time on campus, not just for classes, but for events as well. Students who don’t have an in-person class on a particular day are highly unlikely to commute to school just for a one hour extracurricular event that same evening.
Having less social interactions with each other can also play a large role in affecting students’ mental health as well. It is important to note that virtual interactions may strip students of their outlet of gaining better social support from their peers during times of stress and difficulty.
The sense of “classroom community” simply cannot exist in a virtual state. This online approach to learning feeds into the disconnect between students and their peers. Online learning discourages students from meeting on campus and interacting with others, pushing them into isolation and loneliness.
Amina Khan is a public health junior who can be reached at [email protected]