Four years after USC first moved classes online because of the coronavirus pandemic, most classes at USC have returned to an in-person format. 

However, when February’s heavy rains in Los Angeles made commutes to class and work unsafe, some classes returned online temporarily to reduce unnecessary travel. The return to this era of learning had many reflecting on the online system and its effects on education.

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Jane Davidson, a part-time lecturer of music industry at the Thornton School of Music, held classes via Zoom before the pandemic began because she said she appreciated the many capabilities of online education. Although she has since switched back to in-person classes, she said an online format has unique capabilities beneficial to students. 

Davidson said Zoom can offer a great opportunity or can take away from a learning experience, depending on how faculty members choose to use these tools to best support student engagement. 

“It’s very easy to not be engaged in a class if there’s not a reason to be engaged,” Davidson said. “If you’re on Zoom, obviously, you can turn your camera off and not really participate. If you’re in class, you can be on your laptop and not really be paying attention … When it comes to my job of engaging the students, it’s really a matter of adjusting the way the class is running to get the engagement at the level it needs to be.” 

While Davidson said there is no substitute for being in the same room with peers and professors, she said Zoom can become an invaluable resource if a student lives too far away or an emergency prevents them from coming to class. During the February storms, Davidson was one of the many professors to move their class online. 

“That [Zoom class] was helpful because we had a classroom that got flooded and we had a guest speaker that was coming from the other side of town who I wasn’t going to make come across town,” Davidson said. “It was nice to have that option and to be able to utilize features on Zoom, like breakout rooms.”

She said she has had other instances in which she held hybrid classes because numerous students were occupied with an event and could not attend in person. Although she said she hopes to keep a majority of her classes in a physical classroom, she would consider teaching a course online again if it made sense to have a Zoom class for the content. 

Sydney Hurter, a freshman majoring in economics and mathematics, said the course content affects how effective online classes are for her.

“A lot of my English classes worked really well on Zoom because we could go into breakout rooms and we could clearly hear each other,” Hurter said. “The sciences tend to be a little more difficult to do just because of the nature of the hands-on activities that better work with [those] kinds of subjects.”

Having had an online “Intermediate Macroeconomic Theory” class last semester, Hurter said the class was more convenient to attend than making the usual trek across campus and enjoyed finding different study spots throughout the semester. She also said it helped to have recordings of the class available for future reference. 

Hurter said she noticed that the professor learned to optimize classes for online learning over time by having a curriculum and recording system already established, which made last semester’s economics class better than online classes she’d taken before. While she said she is grateful that professors have learned the benefits of online classes and how to use them, she said professors should not solely rely on the online format because of the lack of personal connection and social cues.

“It was a lot easier to get distracted in the online class,” Hurter said. “I have my phone, I have notifications on Discord … When you have your camera off, it’s very easy to not feel like you have to be always focused and have your eyes on the teacher. But that’s true of larger classes or non-mandatory attendance classes too.”

Hurter said she also disliked how academic honesty is handled during online classes. She said since it is taken less seriously, the assignments are often harder and are graded more harshly. 

Suhani Bansal, a freshman majoring in international relations, said online classes made it harder to pay attention in class. While online classes prove helpful during extreme weather circumstances, she said it’s a lot easier for her to focus during in-person classes since they have more interaction. 

“[If online,] engaging in more discussion-based conversations rather than just a lecture [helps] because I do think that lectures get very monotonous, in person as well,” Bansal said.

Davidson said that even if professors choose to have classes in person, they should continue to use technology in the classroom to support student learning.

“Faculty should continue to learn about different tools that are available to them to incorporate technology into the classroom, whether that’s having the option for an engaging online class, or whether that’s creating assignments that involve technology,” Davidson said.