My Pet Peeve #30: Home Based Learning
Distractions everywhere!
Hi guys, Howard here. If you’re reading this now, chances are that you’ve experienced some sort of remote learning/working before.
You know what I dislike? Home based learning (HBL). Although it’s touted to be more convenient, there are also drawbacks that makes the experience inconvenient. In fact, they it makes me more mentally drained than ever. Covid was the prime factor that ushered us in the era of HBL (and working from home for that matter), which changes our lifestyle significantly. With the current advancement of technology, HBL is made even more possible that it became relevant to us since the lockdown. All you need is a computer with internet connection, and everything is readily accessible to you, anytime and anywhere. Some who live far away from their institution or workplace may benefit more, as they won’t need to wake up so early just to travel to their destination. You think it sounds great? Not so fast! There’s a cost to the convenience of remote learning/working. Not everything is perfect, ya know?
Firstly, home is not my best environment to study full time. I couldn’t concentrate well on lectures and tutorials at home, be it synchronous or asynchronous. There will always be distractions everywhere at home that make me procrastinate more, since I thought I could always go back to read my learning materials online during my free time… I know some people would tell me to put my phone and other websites away, but action done is much harder than talking. Yes I know, self-directed learning is becoming more prominent, to make students learn more independently and be less reliant on their educators to teach them.
Whereas for lessons held in the classroom, there are lesser distractions around me and I felt more motivated to study outside my home. There are also, well, classmates and lecturers that I can count on for social interactions. Because of the classroom environment, I can study better, score better for my tests, and get a higher GPA. Comparing a semester with mostly HBL to one with minimal HBL, I got a better result from the latter.
Secondly, not everything can be taught online — especially practical lessons. You must really be on site to know how to operate an equipment in person. You can’t only rely on videos to master a skill well. Since my course relies heavily on hands-on practical lessons, my school has no choice but to suspend a few practical lessons until we can return to the campus. Tough choice, but we could only complete them at a delayed schedule. Luckily we could return to the campus halfway during the semester for our practical lessons, I can’t imagine going through a full semester without experiencing hands-on lessons on campus though…
Thirdly, there is hardly any humanly interaction with my classmates during HBL. I mean, WhatsApp, Discord and Microsoft Teams exist, but they just don’t feel the same as physical interactions. As an introvert, HBL also hindered me from opportunities to make new friends as I didn’t feel incentivised to talk to ‘strangers’ online, and some of them would already have formed their own cliques prior to HBL.
And finally, online exams can be much more difficult than physical exams. Although the school said that online exams are ‘open book’, they’ll purposely make the questions much more difficult so that we can’t rely on our learning materials easily. I’ll very much rather memorise and practise the theories well then go into the exam room to answer the best I could, than to put myself in hell of an ‘open book’ exam. Unlike physical exams, you can’t backtrack to the previous question if you wish to advance to the next few questions. You must answer the given question first before moving to the next one. So if that happens to be a difficult one, then good luck trying to answer the next few questions on time. Furthermore, taking an image of your answers, emailing yourself and uploading answers onto the given question take a considerable amount of time. Pfft… waste of time.
Call me old-fashioned or boomer if you want, but I work better in a physical environment than in a virtual environment, despite the heavy emphasis on remote learning/working. Even as a self-proclaimed tech enthusiast myself, having too much emphasis on technology can drain our mental wellbeing, and I experienced it myself first-hand. I can also say that I am infected by Covid; not from the disease itself but the by mental implications caused by HBL. Luckily, I’ve gotten myself out of this phase, for now. Howard out!
