The Pandemic’s Lasting Impact on the Classroom Environment
How Covid has altered learning from the perspective of professors and students
—By Tavleen Gill and Kiran Kumar
If asked, most University of Michigan students will be able to tell you exactly where they were when news broke of classes being canceled due to the coronavirus outbreak in 2020. Sophomore Tavleen Gill had been holed up in a study room in the Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library, cramming for a physics exam. She remembered hearing cheering echoing throughout the library, and students calling their friends and parents to announce the breaking news. Students from her physics study group bombarded the group chat to share the great news and express their happiness about the exam being pushed back. That night campus was full of joyful students, going out and having fun, as they had nothing holding them back the following day.
However, most students had not expected their classes to go completely virtual for the rest of the semester, let alone more than a year. What initially started as an exciting, worry-free time period turned into a challenging few years. Students were kicked out of their dorms, and many moved back home. Friends were separated for months, and the traditional college experience was taken from most.
“I remember initially feeling very excited,” says Lexi Klein, a University of Michigan alumni. “My friends and I had been working on a group project when we first got the news,” However, as time went on and the return to normal never came, she realized that her college learning experience had forever been altered.
Transition to virtual learning for professors
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 84% of all American undergraduate students experienced their classes being moved to online-only instruction due to the pandemic. The University of Michigan was one of many colleges that made the switch, causing both students and faculty to face many challenges.
Gary Harper, a Professor in the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education, as well as a Professor of Global Public Health, was in the middle of teaching a lecture when he was informed that the University was going virtual. Although he found the initial transition challenging, he believes the University supported faculty by offering various types of training and workshops to help prepare them.
However, according to Dr. Liz Kolb, a clinical associate and Professor of technical education at the School of Education, the University could have done things differently. “In hindsight, it would have been wise to maybe cancel classes for a month and provide more in-depth training to our faculty, so they were better equipped to handle certain challenges,” says Dr. Kolb. In addition, in her opinion, it would have been smart to provide a needs-based assessment to all students and faculty to have a better understanding on how the University could provide better support to both parties and the challenges they might be facing, better ensuring proper participation and equitable access to learning.
According to one survey, a lot of teachers found the shift from in-person to online instruction difficult due to their personal circumstances.
“The transition was hard for a lot of reasons, but I think the main one for me was trying to manage everything that was happening at home,” says Professor Briana Mezuk, the Epidemiology Director of the Center for Social Epidemiology and Population Health at the University’s School of Public Health. She not only had to adjust to instructing from home, but to taking care of her son who was now at home during school hours.
Meanwhile, Professor Harper was faced with the challenges of being a caretaker for his elderly parents while adjusting to a remote model and figuring out how to keep his students engaged via Zoom.
The pandemic’s impact on attendance
One of the biggest impacts of Covid on classrooms at UofM has been attendance. From the beginning of remote learning in Spring 2020, professors found themselves in classrooms with faltering attendance and participation levels. “Attendance is abysmal,” states Mezuk.
With the return to in-person schooling in Fall 2021, the University was faced with the challenge of maintaining in-person classrooms with the still prominent threat of Covid transmission on campus. This challenge was only exacerbated by the rise of the Omicron variant towards the end of 2021, in which Covid cases across the country rose to an unprecedented peak. While the University of Michigan has a Covid vaccine mandate, the rise of breakthrough infections and viral mutations has diminished the effectiveness of existing Covid vaccines on controlling viral spread. Even though its student body is one of the highest-vaccinated populations in the state, cases reached record levels during the rise of Omicron in late 2021.
The University of Michigan does not mandate across-the-board attendance policies for classrooms, allowing instead for professors to control attendance policies within their own classrooms. Over the last year however, many professors have been faced with pressure to accommodate for immunocompromised students as well as student absences due to Covid or other illnesses.
“Attendance at the School of Education has changed completely because of more lenient attendance policies and there being greater pressure on professors to have highly flexible policies and expectations,” says Dr. Kolb. Even with the return to in-person schooling this past semester, attendance has still not been restored to its pre-pandemic levels. “I feel like attendance fluctuates a lot more than it used to,” says Harper. “This semester has been the most challenging because of the surge of cases in the beginning of the semester. So, people would choose not to come to class.”
With these challenges, some professors have moved away from taking attendance altogether. “My policy is that I’m not going to monitor attendance, but I will pay attention,” states Harper, adding that he believes it is important for professors to check in on students who are frequently absent and ensure they are doing okay.
In contrast, other classrooms on campus have continued taking strict attendance throughout the pandemic. According to Dani Matlock, a senior in the Ross School of Business, there has not been a noticeable difference in student attendance, as attendance policies in most Ross classes have remained the same.
“All of my classes take attendance and participation into account for grading. For one of my classes this semester, I had to show a positive Covid test result in order to even get access to a lecture recording of a missed class,” she states.
Certain classrooms have prioritized attendance more than others. Senior Anna Vanderheuvel describes how, in the College of Engineering, lab attendance takes priority over lectures. “Our lectures have never taken attendance or require it, so attendance for those classes pretty much stayed the same,” she states. “But our labs are required; however, they offered a way to make them up online for those who were not able to come.”
Changes in classroom activity
The return to in-person schooling has made it clear that Covid has had an impact on the classroom environment. One area in which this has been especially prominent is classroom engagement and participation during online lectures.
According to Professor Harper, he noticed it being easier for students to not pay attention and do other things during online lectures, which he often offers if there is a guest speaker for that particular class period. However, he finds participation to be lower during these lectures due to the fact students can keep their cameras off. “I find it really hard to teach to black screens,” he states, especially considering he is someone who feeds off of his students and their responses.
Students also noticed issues with remote participation and learning on their end as well. Tejas Kakunje is a sophomore at UofM and began his freshman year during the 2020-21 school year, when the majority of courses at the university were fully online. According to him, the biggest challenge with online schooling was interacting with classmates and professors.
The decrease in participation in online classrooms has the potential for deleterious effects on learning. Studies have shown that classroom participation is positively correlated with retention and student achievement. Kakunje describes how hindered participation has affected his own learning. “The biggest difference is the retention of course content,” he states. “Being in-person just allows for better engagement.”
Alternative modes of learning
One of the biggest impacts of Covid in education has been the rise in prominence of alternatives to the fully in-person classroom model. One of these is hybrid classrooms, which have become a popular mode of classroom schooling. A compromise between fully remote and in-person learning, this model involves a mix between both modes of instruction.
While some courses used hybrid classrooms prior to the Covid pandemic, they became an increasingly popular model during the 2020-21 school year. This was particularly true in certain courses, such as upper-level science labs, where some level of in-person participation was necessary. MCDB 423, a neurobiology lab course taught by Professor Rafiqa Ameziane, alternated between in-person participation and online lectures during the previous school year.
For professors, one advantage of hybrid classrooms is flexibility. Mezuk describes how the ability to host classes remotely has given professors the opportunity to provide content in a way not possible before. “I do a lot more pre-recorded videos, and I have community stakeholders come in,” she describes. “That’s a huge part now—the fact that I can engage with people in different ways, I think that is a huge benefit.”
Some students have responded positively to the shift towards hybrid classrooms. “I prefer hybrid classes,” states Tejas. “There are some classes that need to be in-person, but the ones that can be online can offer greater flexibility.” Kolb describes a drawback of this approach. “Students are able to have more agency in the structure of the class,” she states. “However, this could be problematic because in the real world we do not have this flexibility and if you become so accustomed to it, it could hurt you.”
Even with high rates of in-person classrooms on campus today, professors today still utilize elements of hybrid learning for situations where course content can’t be delivered in-person—whether it be a snow day, or a speaker unable to attend. In this area, Kolb believes that hybrid learning is here to stay. “I think now that it is here,” she states, “it will never go away and will always be an option.”
The middle ground is not always an improvement on remote schooling, however, and some professors have described how hybrid options can come at the cost of sustained attendance. “Attendance is better when you are completely online but it’s more difficult when it’s hybrid,” explains Professor Harper. On this point, Kolb agrees. “Hybrid classes are not optimal for learning or teaching, and not a great learning environment,” she states.
Ultimately, Kolb believes that the future for hybrid learning will be as an enhancement, rather than a replacement, of the in-person classroom model. “If instructors are being very thoughtful, I don’t think it will harm student learning,” she states, “but for more engaging lectures, it’s not going to be the same online. So professors have to be smart about when classes they pick to be online.”
With the technological limitations of conducting live classrooms on Zoom, asynchronous learning became an increasingly popular mode of learning as well—particularly during the 2020-21 school year. In this format, professors would upload solo lecture videos and allow students to watch them on their own schedule. This plays into the “flipped classroom” instructional approach, in which students view lecture materials at home and use in-class time as a sort of office hours.
Kolb believes there are certain benefits for the asynchronous learning model. “Students who can’t make it to class can still participate,” she states, “and students can now utilize classroom recordings.” For some professors, asynchronous learning became an effective alternative to the diminished participation from the remote learning format. “I had the expectation that everyone had their camera on and would log in to class,” describes Kolb, “but I had to create an asynchronous option because that was not feasible.”
While some professors have thrived with this model of instruction, others see benefits to the live model of lectures. “I think that is one of the things, and I don’t know if students feel this way, but professors need students,” explains Professor Briana Mezuk. “Maybe there’s professors who could just give the talk to an empty room and it would make no difference if there was anybody there, but for me, I need your feedback. And even if that is just that you’re not paying attention, that’s feedback to me because then I can change what I’m doing.”
Overall impacts
As it becomes common for professors to offer models of instruction varying both in-person and online, it’s also important to be mindful about these decisions. According to Professor Mezuk, who teaches a course about mental health, classroom engagement and face-to-face interaction also play a role in the mental health of students. Dr. Kolb also emphasizes the importance of face-to-face interaction, stating it to be the number one factor for cognitive development and proper learning.
Overall, it’s clear that the Covid pandemic has had a lasting impact on education and instruction in classrooms at the University of Michigan. The transition put a burden on professors, uprooted the college experience for students, and altered aspects of attendance and participation in the classroom environment. It’s very possible that one of the longest standing impacts of Covid on education will end up being the rise of new classroom formats, such as asynchronous learning and hybrid classrooms. Aspects of these alternative models of instruction have continued even with the return of in person schooling. While the future of education post-Covid is not completely clear to students and teachers, many are confident that the education system will continue to evolve and adapt to new advancements and obstacles in the future.
Feature photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash