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First Week of School: Online Education vs. In-Person Classes

First week of School: Online Education vs. In-Person Classes (for a UBC Engineering Student)
The first week of in-person school has finally happened! There are a lot of things that I liked about it and there are many things that I did not enjoy. 

After spending a full year online, I learned a lot about how I prefer to learn and work. I realized the current school system doesn’t work for me, and I've reflected back on my experiences of online learning and hybrid learning to share these insights with you.


  
What is Online Education & What is In-Person Education?
Online Education
Online education last year mostly consisted of going to lectures on Zoom. For assignments, UBC (the University of British Columbia) uses the Learning Management System Canvas to post assignments and other materials. 

Labs and group projects (and we have a lot as engineering majors!) were done through meetings on Microsoft Teams with lab kits provided to us through the mail (for chemistry, the lab was virtual). Tests were mostly proctored through Zoom. 

Everything was done online, and those were the main online learning tools and platforms we all became very familiar with. 

In-Person Classes
In-person education is quite different on the other hand. Lectures are done in classrooms/lecture halls with professors and instructors standing with us all in the room together. Labs and group projects are done with full equipment in the actual lab space on campus. 

Tests will take place at the university with people sitting around you and professors and TAs monitoring you physically. The only thing similar between online learning and in-person classes is that Canvas is still being used for communicating assignments, lecture slides, announcements, and other materials.

First Person: How do I feel about Online Education?
The Pros of Online Learning
Online learning is great in terms of logistics:
There is no need to commute. 
Living at home with my family means I can save a lot of expenses on food, rent, and utilities; and 
Since everything is online and lectures are recorded, I can have the flexibility to create my own schedule. 

Online learning is also great in terms of my mental health and personality.  I am someone who gets quite anxious in social settings and in crowded spaces:
Spending time alone during tests and lectures made me feel super comfortable; and
By spending time alone at home, I have more time to focus, and I've felt less stressed and anxious.

The Cons of Online Learning
That said, there are downsides to online education...mainly distractions!!!
Living with my family instead of in a dorm while studying online and at home has been distracting. I didn’t know how to set boundaries between work/school and life, because everything seems to be mixed in together. Living and studying at home means I had to re-learn how to maintain a work-life balance. 
Also, online learning is difficult, especially with labs. Since lab devices require a safer and more professional environment, we did not get to access better equipment and could only use safer materials and equipment without being in-person and supervised. 
Working on team projects online is also difficult because there are a lot of hands-on components in a project that required in-person collaboration. With everything online, we had to make compromises by, for example, having one person create the finished prototype while everyone else contributed by providing designs and creating simpler prototypes.

First Person: How do I feel about In-Person Learning?
The Pros of In-Person Learning
The great benefit of in-person learning is that it allows students to collaborate and work on projects together physically.
 Access to labs and lab equipment is crucial to gaining practical experience compared to online labs. 
Most importantly, the best thing about going to campus is getting to experience campus life! You get to hang out with your friends and do activities together. There are many clubs and events that you can join in person. These are perhaps to best things about the university experience...and you just can't get that online!

The Cons of In-Person Learning
The disadvantages of in-person learning are essentially the opposite of the pros of online learning:

It’s more expensive - from commuting costs to food costs to having to make sure you have better clothes than what you can get away with at home!
Time is wasted on commuting and going from class to class. 
You also have to think about food. Are you going to make your own food? What are you going to eat if there’s not much time to eat during break time, what are you going to do
Last but not least, tests will be more stressful in person. There are other people around you who can distract you. You can see the professors and the TAs watching you and the others which puts more stress onto you as a test taker. 

Conclusion
In my experience being back in the class, there are obvious pros and cons for both online education and in-person classes. Online learning is better logistically and reduces stress for learners while in-person learning allows better access to hands-on activities and a better social life. 

If both sides have their own pros and cons, why not take the benefits of both and create a new way of learning? I believe that a hybrid or blended learning environment between online and in-person learning can be drastically more beneficial than either one of the two learning environments.

For further reading on hybrid or blended learning vs straight-up online education or in-person classes, please see:
What is Hybrid Learning?
Overcoming Learning Loss Going Forward
Teaching Writing in Hybrid Classes