“I’ve been with my blockmates for more than a year, and yet I’ve never seen a single one of them in person.”
“Oh yeah, I know her! We’re in the same org … but we haven’t actually met.”
These are things Filipino college sophomores are saying today. It’s a reality—many students have spent three semesters of their college lives 100-percent online. This setup is undoubtedly not sustainable, and the students feel this firsthand. Calls for an academic break have increased due to the mental stress brought about by not having an in-person support system, as well as other pandemic-related issues.
And yet, has this transition to a fully online education been totally bad? I would argue with a no—at least from an undergraduate and graduate point of view. Filipino university students know the struggles associated with in-person learning: an hour of bad traffic to get to the university, two hours of the same headache to get back home during rush hour, only (sometimes) to find out that the professor will give a surprise free cut for the day or that the only activity would be a multiple-choice exam.
So, now what? One-hundred-percent online learning limits much-need interaction with professors and fellow students. One-hundred-percent in-person learning, meanwhile, sees precious hours wasted in terrible traffic.
Flexible
In my opinion, it’s high time that universities and university professors consider a hybrid of online and in-person learning after the pandemic no longer poses a safety threat—setups that may be tailored to very specific and often intricate circumstances.
In the United States, for example, there are graduate programs that cater to working professionals and home-bound people. These are people who have work on a regular basis or have a family to look after, and yet are interested in pursuing higher studies—they take their classes online. Lectures are prerecorded, timed exams are taken and books can be ordered online.
And then, being in a hybrid learning setup, they will eventually travel to the university for a semester or two to take some classes and finally meet their online professors.
That’s the setup for the Master of Arts in Theology and Christian Ministry program of the Franciscan University of Steubenville in Ohio, my current graduate university. Students of the program choose from a totally on-campus, totally online, or hybrid format. (I have one online classmate who’s a married mother of four, home-schooling and taking her master’s all at the same time.)
The hybrid learning setups are very interesting because, one, students get all the benefits of graduate credentials; two, they get the essential learning need; three, they are not totally alienated from their professors and classmates, unlike in a fully online setup; and four, they get to cater to their professional and family lives in the process. They’re flexible.
No traffic, less commuting
In the Philippine context, perhaps universities could explore this idea of hybrid setups in certain circumstances. For example, what can be done online can stay online: timed multiple choice exams (yes, technology is that advanced already), readings, submission of essays and the like. And then they could keep in-person those activities that need more interaction: discussions, debates, consultations, mentoring and others.
That way, both professor and student need not travel just for a multiple choice exam to be taken. That way, no traffic is experienced, less time and money are spent on commuting.
Universities can also offer options for entire programs to be 100-percent or almost 100-percent online, such as the case of the program I’m enrolled in. These programs can have the same academic rigor, and yet take into consideration, for example, those who can’t commit to a 100-percent in-person setup, like working professionals, single parents, people who have to take care of elderly parents, or maybe even those just interested in studying again but live so far away from the university.
All of these, I must admit, are but ideals, and in reality, on the ground, there’s so much that will go into all of it.
There is, for example, the unfortunate reality that many Filipino university students can’t afford decent laptops, much less afford an undergraduate or graduate education.
But the point is that we can (and ought to) go beyond the idea of the traditional 100-percent in-person, 100-percent classroom-centered setup, to explore different and more flexible options that we never thought possible, and to reach potential students who can benefit from those possibilities.
And it is my hope that those who can afford a university education—whether in-person, online, or hybrid—use them to make Philippine society a more just, humane and fair one for those who can’t. —CONTRIBUTED INQ
The author is pursuing his master’s degree in Catholic Studies with the Franciscan University of Steubenville in Ohio.