My lockdown experience

With the rising concern of covid-19, educational institutions including schools and universities had to make the major adjustments of shifting to remote learning. As a student who has never experienced home-schooling or distance -learning of any kind, adjusting to this type of change was quite challenging. For example, I was used to meeting my friends for a cup of coffee before getting to lectures, but with everything being closed and with having limited time of being outside, it was difficult to adapt to the situation at the beginning. However, after speaking with some of my friends who study the same course as I do, I was not feeling as stressed as I did before. We came up with a plan on how to keep each other motivated and to help each other out if there was anything we could not understand by keeping in contact and staying social.  

On the other hand, lectures and seminars were very flexible in spite of the on-going pandemic. I was able to access my lectures whenever I was able to. This means that recorded lectures were available in student central at all times and it made it easier to take notes, understand and stay focused on the content of that specific topic of the lecture. Seminars as well were very convenient. Usually, in a normal standard seminar; students would be divided between tutors and it took place after the lecture for the basis of doing group activities and to ask questions to the tutor related to the lecture. Seminars during the lockdown were similar to that; we were in the same seminar groups and it still took place after the lectures. However, it was conducted in Microsoft teams in a form of a group chat. Seminars being online made it much easier for me to contact my tutor if I had any module-related problems given that I was able to chat privately to my tutors. For instance, there was plenty of support from the course coordinators and tutors during the submission/exam period. I was able to book an appointment with my tutors to call them and discuss my assignments through Microsoft teams. Tutors were comfortable with both video calls and audio calls according to my preference.