Colette Bernard, In Motion News Reporter
With the COVID-19 pandemic still raging, more Daytona State College students than ever are taking online classes and more professors are teaching them. Faculty and students give mixed but mostly positive reviews of distance learning at DSC.
Best Colleges reports that, in 2020, “student satisfaction with online learning is high.” A total of 95% of the students surveyed would recommend distance learning to other people. The top reason given for this high percentage is the “convenience and flexibility” of studying online, which allows students to easily work around other commitments. A full 80% of students surveyed stated that they felt online learning was “greater than” or “equal to” the quality of in-person learning.
But how do the faculty and students of DSC feel about their online education, which has increased over the past year due to the COVID-19 pandemic?
Kasey Leftwich, a current student at Daytona State, said that although she liked that she saved time on the commute by taking her courses online, “I think overall I prefer in-person classes because I get face-to-face time with the professor and my classmates. I tend to have to force myself to do my online classes, and all the distractions at home makes them a bit more difficult.
Aaron London, an adjunct professor teaching journalism and mass communications at DSC, has taught one full semester of a hybrid course, which means that there were in-person classes as well as online components to the course, and is currently teaching two hybrid courses this semester.
London said that teaching hybrid courses has been both “challenging and rewarding. It has forced me to re-evaluate the course material and my presentation of it as well as general course management.”
London added, “I do prefer in-person teaching for the direct connection with students, but with the experience of teaching hybrid courses, I plan to continue using the Falcon Online system even after we return to face-to-face lectures.”
When learning how to teach students online, Professor London said that “the support provided to faculty by the college in transitioning to the online system cannot be understated. [The training] has made it much easier to focus on teaching despite the outside distractions of a global pandemic.”
London said one of the best things about teaching an online or hybrid course is “the level of functionality in the Falcon Online system and the different ways to engage students. The introduction of different technologies offers me different ways to present material, giving students a wider variety of ways to learn and interact.”
Cheryl Kohen, Director for the Division of Online Studies, noted that DSC has “been offering online classes since 1998, so we have a long history of offering distance education.”
One thing that was important to her was Daytona State College’s mission. “One of the key missions of Daytona State is access, access for students who need something that is both local as well as [online] when they’re juggling other things in their lives, like multiple jobs or caring for family members,” Kohen said. “We’ve been ranked by US News & World Report for the past 7 years as the #1 college in the nation for online learning. There are universities ahead of us on that list, but we are the #1 college.”
Kohen said that faculty “get a lot of support through our division, and we’re very grateful for all the hard work they’ve done.” She is also proud of how students have excelled in online courses. “Success rates were very good [last semester], and we know that our students are dealing with a lot right now,” she said. “We’re grateful to provide opportunities for our students that are safe, affordable, and high-quality.”
Of course, there’s always room for improvement. “I think there’s always opportunities for growth and improvement in any initiative we have,” said Kohen. “So we’ve been working closely with academic advisors to improve retention, so that students feel their needs are being met in an online learning environment.”
Kohen also wants “to make sure that [students are] aware of the resources that are available to them.”
“Live chat [is available] in the course shell, so if [students] go to their course shell home page, some of these classes have an embedded librarian or tutor…available to them,” Kohen said. “We have online retention advisors through Academic Advising, [as well as a] 24/7 chat for students and faculty for Falcon Online that they can access when they log into their Falcon Online classes.”