Students Embrace Remote Learning

Like most Box Hill Institute students, Grant Hogan hasn’t really experienced remote learning before. In fact, it’s been a while since he has been in an educational environment. He said, “I haven’t been in a learning environment for many years, so I enjoyed the first term of face-to-face contact with my teachers.” 

Grant started studying the Certificate IV in Cyber Security this year partly due to the impressive cyber security facilities at the Nelson campus. When the evolving coronavirus situation led to a change in class delivery, Grant knew he had to adapt. He said, “This is happening everywhere and getting a good feel of what it’s like to work and learn remotely is only going to help me long term in the industry.”

With Term 2 shaping up to be a very different experience, Grant has already completed his first week of classes. He has enjoyed the class interaction via text chat on MS Teams, which his teacher uses to deliver lessons via PowerPoint and videos. “The teacher encouraged us to ask questions and all of these were answered through the lesson stream,” he said. 
The class has been using MS Teams all year, so it was easy to learn to adapt to using it for remote learning. 

One of the biggest challenges Grant thought he would face learning remotely is remaining engaged in his course. He said, “I thought it would be difficult to be disciplined to learn remotely, but I’ve found that by getting into a routine, I’ve been able to adapt. It’s been made a lot easier by the teachers facilitating the online lessons to suit the needs of the course.”

This sentiment is echoed by nursing student, Stacie Lee. She used social media to show off her remote learning set up and was grateful to be able to continue studying in a safe environment. She said, “Remote learning started for me today! I’m surprised how much I enjoyed it! Maybe it was finally using my brain again after two weeks off or the adult conversation, either way, so happy to be able to continue my studies in a safe and comfortable environment (my bedroom)”.

While the new way of studying and learning is an adjustment for everyone, it’s feedback like this that shows we are delivering quality education from a safe social distance.