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5 Trends College Students Will See In the Fall of 2020

Written by Rebecca Hastings

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Posted on 5月 06 2020

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National Decision Day (May 1st) is typically a joyous occasion when college students commit to a college or university for the next academic year. However, with the Coronavirus outbreak some of that joy has been dampened by thoughts of uncertainty. Will my first choice college campus be open in the fall or will I be taking all my courses online at home? It's a reaction many students are having since many colleges and universities have yet to decide whether they will open their campuses in the fall. 

Why does this matter? It seems some students did not have a good experience with the online classes. For some, the online classes were always behind the labs.

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"As a STEM major who is currently taking Physics with a lab, online courses suck. My physics class is always behind my lab on the content they’re teaching so I have had to teach myself the lab material. Now I teach myself without help since we have no actual meetings for lab or class. Instead of doing the labs, they send us data sheets and some equations which we are supposed to write our reports on, completely disconnecting us from the material we are writing about. On top of that, the expectations for grading are the same as before. This whole online class thing just doesn’t work for some courses” said a student from Boston College.

Some professors did not take into consideration the amount of work load they were assigning.  “I thought classes may become easier since we’re all at home, and its quicker to go to class, and ultimately just chill during the quarantine. But it has been the complete opposite, the average amount of time I spend sleeping is 4–6 hours (6 on a good day like the weekend), and I spend most of my day trying to catch up on work. Some of my professors are understanding and not forcing deadlines on us, but I have a class in which the professor believes that because we have “more time” at home as a result of quarantine, they assign much more work" said a sophomore from Boston College.

While others did not fully understand the emotional toll the Coronavirus was causing students. According to a senior from Boston College, "I had a Midterm first day of Zoom class. My mom lost her job. I barely have energy to do my homework."  

Colleges and universities have an incredibly huge task ahead of them...open campuses and provide a safe environment for students to come back to. In The Lessons We Learned From the Last Pandemic Swine Flu and How This Information Can Help College Students in the Fall, we discovered that there is great concern and probability that we will have a second wave of Coronavirus cases in the fall. However, if colleges and universities do not open, there's a greater risk of financial ruin. The stakes have never been higher. The pressure is on for students and colleges/universities to find solutions that work for them. As a result, students will see 5 trends emerging now and well into the summer.

          1) Students will Decide to Take a Gap Year

 

  • Take time to review all the help files available.
  • Don't read material just once. Multiple reading, line-by-line reading are among the keys to understanding (i.e.mathematics).
  • Spend some time just navigating your way through the class and making sure you can figure out what the buttons are for.
  • Don't expect too much, to soon. Study and then re-study.
  • Manage your time. You will find that your time management skills will be critical in an online class. Why? Because it's very easy to spend either far too little time, or far too much time on the class. Set designated blocks of time to work on the class. This will help you stay up with the assignments and with the interaction required in most online classes.
  • Download or print out pages for reference and review away from the computer.
  • Set priorities and pay close attention to what your instructor says about priorities.
  • Try hard to solve problems independently before you ask for help. 

Other tips for what makes a successful online student can be found here.

It's definitely a unique time to be a college student and some would agree a frustrating time too, but with time and patience students will excel and in the end be ideal employees capable of handling anything.

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 rebecca hastings CEO hugabox

Rebecca Hastings is the CEO/Founder of hugabox, college care packages with a purpose (90% of the proceeds go to childhood cancer research). She is a huge advocate for sarcoma cancer research funding and works with others across the country to make childhood cancer a national priority. When she is not working, she is off hiking, skiing and playing golf with her husband. You can also find her on Facebook and Instagram @ hugabox.

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