With her full attention on her screen, she jotted down some quick notes on her lecture handouts, as the voice on the screen continued his explanation on flight dynamics in the empty tutorial room. This is how Year 4 Aerospace Engineering student Hur Sinhaeng attends most of her lessons over the last academic year, and her learning experience is hardly unique. Since last year, thousands of NTU students in Singapore and abroad are attending their lessons online as part of the University’s precautionary measures to safeguard the NTU community against COVID-19. Today, we explore how NTU students like Sinhaeng adapt to this new mode of learning, and what they have learnt from this experience.
Lesson Delivered, Different.
The past year and a half have seen drastic changes in the way we learn, work, and communicate. A digital transformation has taken place affecting many aspects of life. From receiving deliveries of fresh groceries in the Halls of Residences, to attending CCA meetings and experiencing remote internships, the past few semesters have been a very different experience for the students here in NTU.
As NTU takes a responsible community approach in the nationwide efforts against COVID-19, a series of safe management measures have been laid out for all NTU staff and students. These measures include limiting class sizes to 50 persons and requiring all large-group lectures to be delivered online, while tutorials, seminars and laboratory sessions can generally continue to be conducted in-person with safety measures in place.
While the changes to the teaching and assessment formats were a departure from the norm for students familiar with physical lectures, NTU students are no strangers to Technology Enhanced Learning. As a part of their curriculum, most students are required to complete several fully online Core Modules on NTULearn, managed by the Learning Activity Management System (LAMS).
With the adapted online teaching approach, lectures for many core courses were delivered online due to the large class sizes. These online lessons are usually pre-recorded lecture sessions uploaded onto NTULearn, and some tutorial sessions are also held virtually through online video conferencing platforms like Microsoft Teams or Zoom due to class size or venue restrictions.
Adapting to Change
Being already familiar with NTULearn, the students were naturally able to quickly find their bearings in this new learning environment and adapted with their own strategies. For Sinhaeng, she adapted to the new mode of lesson delivery by having a dedicated learning environment – she often heads down to the campus to attend her lessons, even though they are held online. She would attend her online lessons in the NTU Library or empty tutorial rooms, as the quiet campus environment limits sources of distractions and allows her to better focus on the lecture contents.
A row of rainbow-coloured collaborative booths with twin-seats and four-seats at NTU’s Lee Wee Nam library. Most of these booths are equipped with a PC. Photo: NTU library
Online learning also allows students to access their learning materials anytime and anywhere, which provides the flexibility to plan for their study schedules. In some of her courses where the lesson materials are released weekly, Sinhaeng can follow the weekly schedules like previous semesters. For other courses where her lecturers have released all course contents at the beginning of the semester, she can plan to cover some content a week or two in advance before the busier weeks in the semester.
A Helping Community
The online learning environment has also encouraged students to tap into various online resources to supplement their learning. While students could still clarify their doubts with lecturers at the end of lecture sessions, Sinhaeng must seek alternative avenues for clarifications via email with her lectures now being online. To consolidate her learning, she frequently looks to explanation videos on YouTube instead as she found the materials to be of high quality and readily accessible. Student Academic Clubs like the CEE Club have also stepped up to provide additional academic resources to support their peers. In addition to providing suggested solutions for past year papers as study guides, these student clubs engaged with students and facilitated peer tutoring sessions for students who require a platform to clarify their doubts from their seniors and peers.
Still Hopeful
Still, with the convenience of online learning, Sinhaeng and her peers found no substitute for the quality of learning from face-to-face interactions with their professors and peers. As the new semester has just commenced, she hopes that the current COVID-19 situation will soon become more manageable, and she looks forward to seeing the vibrant atmosphere in NTU again.
