Matthew Evertson, an English professor at Chadron State College in rural Nebraska, says he has embraced distance learning because it allows more students to participate in his classes more often.
“But audio does seem to be the biggest stumbling block,” Evertson adds.
Teaching remotely, Evertson has to keep more things in mind than just his lecture notes.
Before each class, for example, he has to check that the classroom’s camera and ceiling mics and are properly configured with Zoom, the online videoconferencing software the college uses.
More from UB: How to prevent a whale phishing attack
If he forgets, it can cause degraded audio, particularly for class discussions.
When the remote students message in to notify him, he may not see their alerts for several minutes if he’s lecturing, Evertson says.
And sometimes, he simply can’t fix the audio problems, which he may not even notice until he reviews the video after class, he adds.
“I’ll double-check the mics and we seem to have them all correct but some of the time the audio’s just inexplicably bad,” he says. “We’re just cutting out. It could be the internet—there’s no way for me to know.”
Still, Evertson says he remains a firm believer in distance learning. “The students who are Zooming in, they’ve been very active in the conversations, and I’ve been able to have lots of students come into class who normally wouldn’t be able to do it.”
