How has Covid-19 affected the schoolwork of students who attend Texas Tech University?
Are you struggling in school this semester because many students are due to the changes of COVID-19? There are many students and professors from Texas Tech University who are trying to adjust to this school year due to COVID-19 restrictions such as socially distancing and wearing face masks. My name is Emily Sanchez, and I personally have been struggling with the way everything has changed when the pandemic came around. I will be exploring the question, “How has COVID-19 affected the schoolwork of students who attend Texas Tech University?” I have explored this question by conducting a survey and having students who attend Texas Tech answer the questions in the survey to see how COVID-19 has affected their schoolwork such as grades or even learning experience.
The results I received from the survey I conducted were that many students struggled with learning the content needed for their courses and it was difficult for them to support their focus throughout the semester. I noticed that many of these courses that the students said were hard to focus on were hard classes such as General Chemistry, Biology, Criminal Justice and Calculus. There was a student that said, “it was difficult to learn online” and another student stated, “Chemistry in general taught in the format it was taught made it harder for me to do my assignments and retain information.” I am sure there are plenty of more students who feel the same way about these hard classes that are being taught through an online learning format. I am personally more of a hands-on person and I learn better if I am attending class in person and engaging with other students, doing experiments, group discussions, or working on a math problem on a white board.
Some students believed that they would have gotten better grades throughout the semester if there were not any learning restrictions due to COVID-19. One student said that they would be more focused if their courses were in person rather than an online class. Another student stated, “For some classes, yes. And that is because it would be easier for me to retain the information if I were hearing it in person. I’m someone who has a challenging time focusing with online classes so if they weren’t learning restrictions on some classes I would absolutely be doing better.” I agree with these students. My grades were not terrible this semester, but they could have been a lot better if I could have retained the information given in each of my courses.
There were students that said that if their professors were a lot more understanding about the circumstances, we are all going through such as the social distancing to the point where we are not able to hangout in groups or do group studies in person because of the pandemic. Everything throughout the semester at Texas Tech had to be done virtually or social distancing and wearing mask was something everyone had to do. I believe students at Texas Tech just want to have a normal college experience just like other college students who attend other Universities. Throughout all my courses I only had one professor that was understanding and considerate about everything that is going on because of the pandemic. She did an amazing job at checking up on us and being there for us if we needed help or just someone to reach out to.
According to a report by Emma Garcia and Elaine Weiss called, “-19 and student performance, equity, and U.S. education policy”, they believe students performances have been affected from the pandemic as they stated, “The school lockdowns that started in the spring of 2020 reduced instructional and learning time, which are known to impede student COVID performance, with disparate impacts on diverse groups of students.” This shows how students’ performances were affected due to the changes of the learning environments that most students were adjusted to before the pandemic. On the survey I conducted, a student stated that they had been used to the in-person learning style for 15 years and every in-person session you will always pick up where you left off from the last lecture and it’s easier to focus and find help in that environment than online. I personally feel like my performance in school has been affected since I am less interested in the topics that are being taught in my courses since I cannot engage into the lectures that are given online.
Overall, from the student’s perspectives of how COVID-19 has affected their schoolwork one may see that it has affected their grades and the way they retain information throughout the online learning format that most professor’s at Texas Tech University have had to adapt to ever since pandemic. What I have learned throughout this experiment is that this pandemic had all of us change our ways of learning for students and the way of teaching professors from Texas Tech University. But there is one last thing that we are forgetting, we are all in this together and that we are not alone through these circumstances so we all need to be there to uplift each other and help one another through these circumstances.
