Online education after the epidemic may affect students' learning habits as well as the entire education system.

Have you ever had online classes before? I believe the answer for most people is yes. Online education has been a hot-button issue that affects everybody’s life, also, this is very prevalent and influenced many people, not just students, but their family as well. Especially after the epidemic, online classes used to be a daily routine for most students. In this situation, online classes inevitably affect the study habits of many students. Let’s see if post-pandemic online education played a significant role in influencing student’s study habits in the ways that students learn and distribute their free time. 

 

According to Lighthouse College, the global outbreak of the New Coronavirus has forced educators, parents, and students to think critically, be creative, communicate more, collaborate more, and be flexible to proactively address the issues they face. In the process, a new approach to education has emerged. Online classes are an alternative to offline classes in between outbreaks.

 

Sissie Meng is a writing teacher who has been teaching for almost 20 years with high school and college students. She is an expert in secondary as well as university education systems and has extensive teaching experience. She has frequent communication with students and is very aware of the changes in their academic performance. She has also gone through a period of transitioning from offline education to comprehensive online education. Through my interviews, education experts showed that the normalization of online classes after the pandemic made the problem of polarization of students even worse.

 

The first polarization is reflected in students' study habits prior to the normalization of online classes. Meng believes that for college students, post-pandemic online classes amplify students' previous study habits and attitudes because online education depends more on students' autonomy. Students who were self-disciplined before may have more time to study because of the free schedule that allows them to be more methodical about their study schedule and what they must do. Students who were not serious about their studies before the pandemic and did not want to spend time on their studies were more likely to spend time procrastinating and have their grades slip.

 

According to the interview with Sissie Meng, the same theory applies to homework and exams. Students who are willing to be honest about their work will take homework and online exams with the same seriousness as before. Students who are opportunistic are more likely to achieve their goals through means of exploiting the digital system, even if it is academically dishonest and irresponsible for their work. Some multiple-choice assignments, for example, test whether students are responsible for their own learning. Students' learning outcomes depend on the level of effort they put in.

 

Moving the classroom from offline to online can make the whole model less efficient for the teacher. There are a lot of technical problems in the process of going online, not only on the teacher's side but also on the student side. Meng said the ideal time to keep students' attention online is 25-30 minutes, which makes it more demanding for teachers because they need to get through the points faster and students may miss important information because of the distractions that technology provides. Meng says it's hard to get students' attention with purely online lectures because there's less interaction between teachers and students. Some students will simply turn off the camera, and the teacher cannot tell by the student's facial expression whether the student has understood the point. The teacher's questions also do not reach every student, and often motivated students will take the initiative to answer, and unmotivated students will lose the opportunity to answer online questions. Meng said this is obviously a serious blow to student learning in the classroom, as about 30 percent of students have told her after class that they have trouble paying attention in online classes compared to offline classes, and that they sometimes miss key points as a result. Students will have to spend more time on self-study after class to make up for what they missed in class.

 

In terms of giving students feedback on their work, teachers say it is difficult to give in-person feedback. Meng agrees with students who say that offline work review is more helpful and that offline office hours with teachers help them answer ambiguous questions.

 

Meng is a writing teacher and said that for the students she teaches in the system, switching to full online education because of the pandemic will have a greater impact on the Chinese SAT.

 

Because of China's large population base, there are many students taking the Chinese SAT each year. Family economic level differences also vary from student to student. For example, according to Dan Li’s essay the total number of students who will take the Chinese SAT in 2022 is 10.71 million. Most of the students who take the college entrance exam in China do not have electronic devices such as computers. This means that there is no easy way to find information.

 

Sissie Meng said, “Students from better-off families can hire after school tutors or use their free schedules and saved commuting time to take more online classes. This group of better-off students also has more access to educational resources. In contrast to this group of students, the other group of students whose families are not financially able to support additional tutors are forced to rely on their own efforts to maintain their performance levels.” With online classes, it is difficult for the schoolteacher to reach every student, so the student's effort and time spent on learning becomes more evident.

 

I did a questionnaire survey on the content of the range of high school and college students in China and received responses from nearly 20 students. They all said they had experienced a period of fully online classes and no offline classes. Seven of the college students said they preferred online classes. To begin with, most of the offline classes in Chinese universities need to be closed to conduct them, which means that students' freedom to enter and leave the school is restricted. College students view college as a hands-on environment and need free time to find internships and socially connected, up-to-date activities to enrich their college experience. The closure of offline classes has caused them to lose many of these opportunities to train their abilities. Eight high school students who were about to take the China SAT said they preferred offline classes because they agreed that they were more efficient. They were able to ask questions and get answers from the teacher in a timely manner, and they were able to focus more during the class under the teacher's supervision. The teacher also reminds students to take notes during class and gives them time to take notes. High school students report that these prerequisites for online classes are difficult to meet.

 

When confronted with the question, "What do you think is the point where your study habits have changed the most with the normalization of online classes?" When asked this question, both college and high school students unanimously said that they have more of their own ideas about scheduling, rather than just following the school schedule. They have more time to review and strengthen their weak subjects and have more energy to improve their hobbies after studying. However, there were still five students who said they had less self-control and were not studying as efficiently as before, and that they were more used to following the pace set by their teachers and the school.

 

I shared the results of my questionnaire with Sissie Meng. She said, “The Chinese education system does not give students much freedom to organize their time at the secondary school level, so they are overwhelmed when they are asked to organize their own study time. This sudden free time can cause many students to become less self-controlled as their long-suppressed desire to have fun explodes.”

 

Dan Li claims in his essay that the shifting to online classes during the Covid-19 pandemic constituted unprecedented experience and brought priceless lessons from which we should learn. The post-pandemic era will bring new emergencies, pandemics, and uncertainties. A blended model that combines online and face-to-face classes could be adopted to; boost students’ preparedness for unexpected circumstances during emergencies; enhance students’ familiarity with the online learning style.

 

According to the Journal of Science and Wealth 2022, Issue 07 online classes are undoubtedly a major change in education in this era, with both advantages and disadvantages for students. In a way, the normalization of online classes after the covid-19 pandemic has strengthened the issue of polarization of educational resources over student performance. From a micro perspective, this is a good thing for students who study hard and have good family economic conditions; online classes improve the overall competitiveness of this group. From a macro perspective, for China, with such a large population base, the online class system has set the whole education industry back a lot and reduced the overall efficiency of education.

 

 

Works Cited

Hassan. “疫情下的学习与学习- 知乎.” 知乎专栏, 4 March 2022, https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/476003077. Accessed 9 December 2022.

Li, Dan. “Home.” The Shift to Online Classes During the Covid-19 Pandemic: Benefits, Challenges, and Required Improvements from the Students’ Perspective, https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1333732.pdf. Accessed 9 December 2022.

Lighthouse College. “疫情下，全球 15 亿学生在上网课，未来教育的3 个颠覆式新趋势.” 灯塔学院, 20 August 2020, http://alighthouse.blog.caixin.com/archives/233202. Accessed 9 December 2022.

Meng, Meng. Interview. Conducted by Yao Xiao, 6 December 2022.

Science and Wealth. “A Comparative Study on the Effect of Online and Offline Learning Among University Students.” 2022, https://www.zhihu.com/market/paid_magazine/1527336730399404032/section/1527336837512781824?origin_label=search. Accessed 9 December 2022.