Since the pandemic started, there have been a lot of changes in our lifestyle, work, school, and in our overall health. Everything seems like a blink of an eye. In fact, one of the hardest experiences during every lockdown and quarantine we face today is being a student. It can cause us to go through severe stress and miscommunication with our instructors and peers, also in coping up with our daily struggles. There will surely be technical issues, internet connection problems, inability to manage time, family problems, mental health, and so much more that may influence the effectiveness of the communication process. Thus, it is imperative for educational institutions to develop more effective virtual workplace communication and to plan for the return of face-to-face classes, as online learning should not be used as a band-aid solution for our pandemic-affected educational system for an extended period of time.
Starting and maintaining interaction between peer-to-peer and student-to-instructor is truly crucial in online learning, for it can be difficult for us to even enable the connection we experienced during face-to-face classes. As a result, it becomes one of the reasons why most students nowadays are less likely to achieve an effective and successful learning, especially when instructors tend to give collaborative activities. It is mainly because these kinds of group activities require us, students, to be able to create first a connection or relationship among our classmates through the use of communication before doing a certain task. With this being said, it is evident how significant it is for us to have an effective communication in order to create a relationship and accomplish a goal in a collaborative activity. However, we cannot also deny the fact how difficult it is for students to communicate effectively and be productive in an online setup.
The distance education speaks of the degradation in interactions or communication among students due to the absence of emotional connection with each other or real-time feedback that happens when we are in a face-to-face setup. This scenario exemplifies the interactive model of communication which we utilized as a basis to develop our own model of communication, highlighting the students’ acquired difficulties when working collaboratively in an online setting. As per Bajracharya (2018), different models that follow the interactive model of communication can cause miscommunication because the exchange of feedback between the two people communicating is slower than usual. It can be seen in our model, Peer to Peer Online Learning Model, that there are various external factors, referred to as noise, which may affect the flow of communication, such as unstable internet connections, unscheduled power outages, insufficient gadgets, family problems, and others that affect the students’ productivity. The platforms that students commonly use to brainstorm ideas, channel their thoughts, and generate feedback are also depicted in the diagram.
Furthermore, it is mentioned in the study that better communication is achieved when the speaker and the listener share a common field of experience, which is not the case in this setup because students enrolled in General Education (GED) courses came from different programs at the university. Their schedule of availability may differ, and they may have a different approach or understanding of a particular topic, which affects the message they encode. This implies that distance learning becomes ineffective when it shifts to a linear model of communication because constant feedback is not obtained.
In addition to this, according to Bakar, et al. (2020), he stated that communication is one of the most significant tools in order to succeed in a collaboration work among your peers. However, we cannot deny the fact that the communication among students during collaborative activities in an online learning setup is basically one of the most affected aspects, and the reason why most students are unable to come up with a common understanding or idea when doing a certain task. This is merely because the students’ communication is being disrupted due to the unresolved uncertainty in interactions while creating ideas, especially when their primary communication is written and in an asynchronous manner. Simply, the students are unable to communicate their ideas, comments, and suggestions well among their peers during the period of their work. As a result, there is a higher possibility that the ideas of students may overlap with each other, resulting in an ambiguous idea, as well as a decrease in productivity or delay in doing their respective works.
With this being said, yes, it is true that communication became easier for people to access through the use of various kinds of technology-based devices, which aided the beginning of online education. However, having this kind of setup during collaborative work does not seem to be easy for most students to handle. For the reason that students have different learning styles in this distance learning. Hence, we highly recommend that students should be able to meet halfway among their peers, such as scheduling a meeting on the most ideal day and time to avoid conflicts in their respective schedule, as well as to consider the mode of communication that they will utilize for smoother communication.
Lastly, while participating in distance education, students and teachers may experience psychological issues and other mental health problems that can result in not being able to participate and grasp knowledge effectively. As we all know, having mental issues is far more than just a battle within yourself, but also it can mess up how we communicate with others. Certainly, this can also be classified as a barrier or noise in a communication process, especially when students who are experiencing this might have a hard time focusing on a given task or they might get anxious to interact and share ideas with their peers. Their thoughts get all mixed up and entangled. As Oyoque and Brown [as cited in Wiles (2020)] state, anxiety is fuelled by a sense of insecurity and exposure to the unknown. Hence, they have realized that COVID-19 has impacted our desire to shift and adapt quickly, which can be daunting. However, others may encounter the opposite where they can tolerate staying at home while doing good with their studies, for they feel more safe and inspired in engaging with learning materials from comforting environments which are home. Nonetheless, most of the students still find it difficult to be productive in an online setup where it drains our energy and brings virtual fatigue along with having various mental health disorders such as anxiety, stress, and depression.
Indeed, in these trying times, particularly in learning to adapt into this online learning setup and in communicating effectively with our peers and professors while doing so, it is important to always remember that despite of having less connection, finding trouble to interact, and experiencing mental health illness, we should never be arrogant with the fact that other people are also struggling in participating with the distance education. Therefore, to become an effective communicator is to be able to understand and be considerate with other people’s availability, schedules, and overall state, especially when we are totally coming from different programs, attending a GED subject. It is also best to actively listen and be specific with your intentions and ideas without a negative tone, so that the receiver will not misinterpret the message we intend them to acknowledge and to also maximize the limited time available.
Regardless, students are still finding it hard to learn in an online setup, for it is a tiring process for both professors and students and can easily make us unmotivated as well as fatigued. For this reason, it is crucial for educational institutions and for the government to find a way to develop more effective virtual workplace communication and hopefully plan for the return of face-to-face classes even if it is limited due to the pandemic. Since we have been adapting ourselves to this kind of learning, the real question here is, for how long?
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