How Covid restrictions have stopped students from having the full campus experience

AUDRIE TAN, FION PHUA, AND GWENNETH TEO find out how students feel about attending lessons from home and not being able to meet their classmates.

Hacking through bushes ahead without direction. That’s how Ms Edwina Che, 18, a second-year Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering student at Ngee Ann Polytechnic (NP), describes her past year as a student undergoing home-based learning (HBL).

Only in Ms Che’s second year did she manage to learn what should have been “common knowledge” to a first-year student under normal circumstances: operating common laboratory equipment. Her lecturers expected students to have already acquired basic practical skills but ended up having to demonstrate them.

Students were forced to study from home when Covid-19 first hit our shores last year. HBL for Institutes of Higher Learning started on Apr 8, 2020, which meant that for first and second year polytechnic students, their school experience has mostly been online for the past year and a half.

In a survey conducted by Kawan, at least half of 107 respondents felt frustrated that Covid-19 has changed their schooling experience.

INFOGRAPHICS BY AUDRIE TAN

Ms Ling Hui-En Jaynie, 18, shares the same sentiments. The second-year Food, Nutrition & Culinary Science student from Temasek Polytechnic was looking forward to her freshmen orientation when it got cancelled. For Ms Ling, it was a missed opportunity to learn about her “school culture” and form friendships.

“On the first day of school, we’re sort of thrown into the deep sea to make new friends ourselves. And because [lessons started on the first day], there’s no chance to get to know your classmates. I remember [taking] quite long to get to know my classmates' names and to even recognise them because there’s no bonding activity or anything,” Ms Ling says.

Physically attending co-curricular activities (CCAs) have also become a thing of the past. Ms Ling quit her inline skating CCA because training sessions moved online and she didn’t have the motivation to attend them. She felt that it was “hard to make friends” and sessions were “quite boring”.

While she was part of her inline skating CCA, Ms Ling (left) went to try the sport with her secondary school friends instead as she had not met anyone from her CCA. PHOTO COURTESY OF LING HUI-EN JAYNIE

Many students, including Ms Ling, agreed that the school fees they were paying for didn’t match the experience they were receiving. She explains that students feel this way as they’re unable to use school facilities like the swimming pool and gym but they’re “still paying the same price”. She adds that at home, “you’re using your own wifi”, electricity and even air conditioning.

Ms Sumita Achuthan, senior Pharmaceutical Science lecturer at the School of Life Sciences & Chemical Technology (LSCT) in NP, empathises with students.

“It’s the whole experience of walking into campus, going into the food court, looking at all the crowd ... going into the classroom, looking at the PowerPoint slides,” Ms Achuthan says. “It's that myriad of stimuli you get when you go to some place. It’s like looking at a holiday destination on TV and experiencing it.”

Even though it was lunch hour, the usually packed food court in NP was more than half empty. PHOTO BY GWENNETH TEO.

To Ms Che, the classroom experience creates a “certain atmosphere for learning”. Virtual learning has made it difficult for her to learn because “it seems like everybody else is getting it”, making her afraid to clarify her doubts.

Ms Olivia Ho, 34, the deputy course chair of Pharmaceutical Science in LSCT, also says that with HBL, students lack authentic connections and chances for “peer learning” and helping as they cannot turn to their friends and clarify on the spot.

Even though more than half of Kawan’s survey respondents chose campus learning over HBL, HBL has its own benefits. Ms Che had more time to focus on herself and discovered new hobbies.

Though the chances to go to campus have decreased, Ms Che (left) does go to school for practical sessions about two times a week this semester and is able to meet her friends. PHOTO COURTESY OF EDWINA CHE

Ms Ho believes that students are now more digitally savvy, “which is an advantage” as the world becomes increasingly digitised. As Singapore’s vaccination rate rapidly grows and things return to normal, she advises students to focus on what was “gained from this experience”.

“Take this as one thing to build your resilience,” Ms Achuthan says. Although she misses her students, she believes that everyone should stay positive and learn to “adapt and adjust” to these challenging times.

“We all have to look at the glass as half full. Till it gets fully full, we’ve got to adjust with this half full glass,” says Ms Achuthan.