Reflection 5 Alicia Srinivasagam

CMCL 507

During this transition to remote learning, I’ve been having a lot of fears and doubts. I have taken
a couple of online courses during my degree, but both were option courses composed of simple
D2L quizzes. I succeeded in these courses but that didn’t give me much confidence in myself,
since this situation means that I will have to complete my science courses and research project
online. My zoology midterms were both switched to an online exam where the professor posts
the questions on D2L and students have 1-2 hours to type up and submit the answers digitally.
Unfortunately, I had both a lecture and lab exam in this format. The lab exam was especially
challenging because only photographs of skulls and animal specimens were provided. I spent a
lot of extra time in the lab handling and identifying skulls and specimens but switching rapidly to
identifying and even measuring from photographs was extremely challenging. This exam is
normally set up in timed 3-minute stations for each specimen; the online version had slightly
similar timing (one hour for 17 questions). This timing was the most challenging part for me. I
was rushing through the entire exam, the time constraint and all my fears about succeeding in an
online zoology course culminated and panic set in. I never felt so rushed during an exam and
struggled a lot with restricting the time I spent on each question. After completing this exam, my
fears about remote learning were much worse. I had the lecture midterm for the same course the
next day, and I went in feeling really discouraged. The rest of the class had already taken the
midterm in person, I had this exam deferred because of my injury and timing meant it had to be
switched to an online format because of the pandemic. I was feeling intimidated by the online
lecture midterm because I knew that the exam would be mostly application type questions (lower
level understanding questions such as definitions can easily be looked up in the notes,
application questions better test student learning in this format). Although I usually do not
struggle with this type of question in a closed book exam, it was a source of anxiety for me in
this midterm even though it was open book.
In the end I actually performed quite well on both exams, I was honestly shocked by this.
The sudden transition to remote learning was difficult for me because of the anxiety that it
caused, but overall my current methods of learning and studying have allowed me to succeed on
online assessments. Looking back at my experience and knowing the results of both exams, I can
see that the biggest challenge for me comes from the nervousness I have been experiencing with
these new teaching methods. I think that this insecurity comes from my previous academic
struggles; I was just beginning to feel like I had found the correct methods of learning for myself
through metacognition, but this circumstance has completely pushed me out of my comfort zone.
Since I am also enrolled in spring classes and remote learning will continue at the university for
the foreseeable future, I would like to use this semester as an opportunity to discover new
strategies to continue succeeding academically despite this circumstance. In the end, I believe
that this sudden change in the external world will act as a transformative experience that will
ultimately change my internal attitudes and make me a better learner (Jarvis, 2004).
I believe that the main challenges that I’ll have in my learning will come up as I continue
learning online. I believe that I was able to succeed on the assessments I’ve had so far because
they were tested on material that I had already been taught through in-person lectures. Attending
lectures and learning collaboratively with other students are the strategies that help me to learn
most successfully, but these methods are no longer possible. Unfortunately, all of my courses
have opted for pre-recorded lectures rather than streaming with Zoom; I believe that this will be
a challenge since I will no longer be able to attend lectures or ask questions in real time.
However, this is something that can possibly be worked around; I plan to continue watching the
lecture videos during my regular lecture times so that I can stay on schedule throughout the week
and email my professors with questions in a timely manner. Nevertheless, I believe that my
motivation towards learning will be affected since the social aspect of learning will be nearly
eliminated from my education. It will require additional effort from both myself and the
instructors to avoid the ‘banking concept’ discussed in Pedagogy of the Oppressed; without
experiential and social learning the pre-recorded lectures are simply delivering correct
information that students have to receive (Freire, 2005).
I am still continuing my peer mentoring digitally as a support on Slack messaging. The
peer mentors and GTAs are present on slack to answer students’ questions and post fun videos
and gifs to keep the mood of the online discussion lighthearted. We chose this strategy in order
to continue cultivating a classroom culture promoting low pressure discussion where students
can identify confusions they may have with the course material; this will help them to continue
thinking metacognitively about their learning as the course moves online (Tanner, 2012). The
‘just for fun’ channel that the peer mentors and GTAs run is meant to help associate positive
emotion with the course. We hope that this positive emotion will keep student motivation high as
well (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD], 2012), since this is a
difficult transition period. Since peer mentors are also going through the same learning changes,
I have made myself available to offer strategies and advice for online learning as well.
 References

Freire, P. (2005). Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 30th Anniversary Edition. New York, NY:
Continuum International Publishing Group.

Jarvis, P. (2004). Chapter 1: Towards a philosophy of human learning: An existentialist

perspective. PDF.

Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. (2012). The Nature of Learning:
Using Research to Inspire Practice, Practitioner Guide. PDF.

Tanner, K. (2012). Promoting Student Metacognition. CBE- Life Sciences Education, 11, 113-
120. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.12-03-0033