Things on campus have been mostly back to normal since the COVID-19 pandemic for quite some time now, including classes. We no longer need to socially distance, wear masks, get weekly tests done, or have all online classes. Life is now back to normal in basically all aspects for SUNY Oswego college students. So why are some classes still online?

Many students focus and learn better being in the classroom, sitting at desks with other students and a professor teaching in front of them. This allows for hands-on learning and teaching and many students get more out of this.

Zoom classes, which students attended from home via a link from the professor, became a part of normal life. Students do not always need to have their camera or mic on so it is easy to get away with not paying attention. Zoom was the main platform for classes in the beginning of the pandemic in 2020 and 2021 and became a common website that everyone soon learned how to use. Now that things seem to be better, Zoom is not used as much directly for classes, which is the way it should be. 

Worse than Zoom classes though are asynchronous classes. This is when there is no meeting time for a class, whether that is in person or on Zoom. The professor sends out work to do whenever the students get a chance to turn it in before a due date. Since there is no meeting time for the class, it can be difficult to distinguish the due dates of assignments.

This is basically just the students teaching themselves. The professor sometimes sends out videos to try and be helpful, but it is not always as helpful as they think it is.

It is understandable that asynchronous classes were more common during the pandemic and the school shutting down because there were not many other options, but now it does not really make any sense and is an inconvenience to students. They pay a lot of money to attend college and it is not the students job to teach themselves: it is the professor’s job. 

There are classes such as language classes being taught asynchronously. It seems difficult to learn a language by yourself and teach yourself everything with only the help of a couple worksheets and videos.

There is no point to holding asynchronous classes anymore. It would be easier to just hold a class meeting time and teach the students face-to-face. This might be difficult for the professor but as college students, we are the ones paying for our education and showing up willing to learn. The job of a professor and teacher is to teach us important things in the classes we are choosing to take.

As time goes on and hopefully things continue to get better with COVID-19, hopefully asynchronous classes will be a thing of the past and in person classes for college students will be available for everyone no matter the class.