Hello and welcome to this episode of the College of Geer Talk Past. This week we'll be discussing working slash study from home. My name is Chiang Xu Li. I'm a student at University of Arizona and I'm joined here with the one and only Omar, who is also a student for Yemen.
Hello Chance, it's a great pleasure for me to be here with you today. Thank you Omar. Of course, it's interesting to have a sense working and studying from home and learning from home has been such a big topic sense, COVID, everything going on. Do you agree Omar?
I agree with you Chance, 100%. What is it like studying from home in the US and are there any challenges? Yeah, you know, I would say working from home in the US has been positive and negative. Working from home really, being such a big thing in COVID hit.
I mean, I can remember like never working from home in my childhood, really always going to school or my parents always went to work. Never like it was a thing working from home. An interesting fact, according to Pew Research Center, 59% of Americans worked from home after the pandemic now because it's a lot easier, not having to travel and just have more time at home. I think this is kind of a big thing for a lot of Americans that happened.
It just came by such a luxury being at home and having time with the family, having more time around the house and be able to work from home. I think a lot of people really enjoyed that. I say the negative of this is when we are missing out on the human interaction part of our daily jobs. We kind of miss that in-person engagement with our coworkers and that human interaction part and the daily life of working from home can also be kind of a bad effect on some people.
Very interesting, actually. Does it change? Do you think there's a change after COVID-19? And are you going full-time to the university or do you still get some online lectures?
Yeah, you know, Omar, it's really interesting because I think before COVID, there was online classes but it kind of was really a thing. After COVID, definitely one more case to do online, personally myself. I'm full-time at the university but I still take two or three online classes since I've been at the university of Arizona. So yeah, we still get some online lectures but they're definitely starting to become more common especially after the pandemic.
Do you prefer going to university or studying from home? Working from home is definitely a nice luxury. You don't have to worry about getting up in the morning and doing a nice morning routine and being in a rush. But I would say being in person at the university and learning from the professor in person is definitely more my style, more like I guess you say the old school style.
But I definitely love that style of learning being in person, the human interaction and honestly just being able to just get that human interaction. So yeah, well about you Omar, do you study off different home? I know that Airnet and Yemen is a big challenge but I'm just curious to know like how do you manage that, there's any challenges with that? Surely, there are many challenges in online learning in Yemen.
Actually, a study was conducted in 2021 by researcher Faru Gethamimi, who's an assistant professor at the Princeton University in Saudi Arabia and Yasavar Vai, who's also part of the English department or the head of the English department in Al-Baidha University in Yemen. The title of the study is the impact of COVID-19 on English language teaching in Yemen. The study states that some of the many students don't have access to discops, smartphones, or even laptops, while other scuntwitches bundles for online learning. The study claimed that 73.3% of the participants who study are not able to purchase content bundles.
Only 9.2% of them are capable of buying the bundles. Yeah, that's really interesting Omar. You know, only 9.2% of the students being able to buy the bundles, try to create a disadvantage for all the students. And I'm going to imagine the kids were left out, they probably feel some type of way, not being able to have the same experience as the kids that have the bundles.
So that's definitely a really interesting topic right there for sure. Yeah, I mean, can you imagine that? Also, Chansa, another study was also conducted about the issues and challenges of using e-learning in Yemeni public university. Indicated that among the challenges facing students in Yemen in online learning is that the parents feel that the traditional method of learning is more effective than online learning.
Yeah, I definitely see that merit opinion a lot. You know, I think parents do have different opinions, some are more agreeing on online learning. And you know, obviously, I think older parents especially are more towards the traditional online learning method, like you said, is more effective than online learning. So I think it kind of just varies and depends.
But I would have to ask you if the students have an internet access in Yemen or not. Yeah, of course they have internet access, but you know, the problem is that internet connectivity in Yemen. I mean, it is one of the challenges that the students are building with. In short, the internet in Yemen is so expensive, especially for students' chance.
And you kind of might give that to students don't have, I mean, that lots of money to get up all extra services like internet and so on and so forth. So a little on the speed, which is also very slow. In fact, this places Yemen at 207 as the study suggests in the world drinking as the lowest internet connection in the world. Yeah, wow.
And still, but all of that, you're still able to attend projects, but just the bridge project and other similar projects, Omar? Well, it's a matter of managing your time. If you manage your time very well, then of course you will succeed. Let me tell you a story that happened to me last year.
I attended a course online with some students from all around the world. I believe, since you're speaking, I was the only student who had a terrible internet connection. Sorry about your connection, but at least it is good that the other students had a good connection. And I'm glad with everything that is happening.
At least the internet connection is not too too too big a problem. It prepares like you said, the bundles and other things that are happening. Yeah, I mean, it is embarrassing, especially during sessions. The internet was a very slow chance.
It was just it kept actually cutting off many times, which was really upsetting. In addition to the issues with the internet, sometimes literacy was not available during the times of the program, which definitely meant matters was it was challenging being in an online program, actually. Yeah, I can only imagine what the internet problem, how that would go, just the challenges that bring with that. What did you do to go over it?
I mean, like, did you find a better internet or did you have to get the information in different ways? What did you do to finish your project? What's the challenge that you don't value internet and electricity all at the same time? That's a very good question, Chance.
As a matter of fact, I had to look for better internet outside the house. I would drive to some nearby hotels which provide good internet service. It was challenging somehow for me, but luckily I was privileged to get the internet elsewhere. We're not found, for example, in the house.
And of course, I got through it with flankers and I'm so proud of that. Yeah, that's great. I'm glad you were able to get that, like you said, but of course that is a challenge. I believe that students are used to going to classrooms and seem to only offer for them to get knowledge as they can be lecturers physically.
Yeah, so now we're going to listen to some messages from our fellow students, from our Yemeni and American students, from the British project to hear their thoughts on the topic. One big benefit I think that comes from online learning is having the opportunity to meet and spend time with people you may never have had the opportunity to meet before, very much like this fellowship. It is somewhat unlikely that I would have met most of you before and I really value that. One downside, of course, is that you're not meeting in person.
And so maybe some of the closeness that you get with being able to be physically in the same room, you don't have that opportunity. And some would say that there is a downside to that. I've done a lot of online learning and for me, the benefits definitely outweigh the negative sides. Learning online is something very wonderful because it saves money and a lot of time for me.
However, there are some disadvantages between me and learning. The first one, it's like an internet connection in my city is so good. Also, the low quality of blessing the information. I think the positive side of learning online involves the students to attend classes from the education.
And also online lectures can be recorded or hired, shared or given to reference, which allows students to accept the learning material at a time of their comfort. I think online learning is far more affordable as compared to physical learning. This is because online learning emanates the cost points of student transportation, student meals. And I think also one of the positive side is that student can't miss out on lessons and they can't attend classes from home or location of choice.
But the negative side is, for many students, the struggle will focus on the screen for a long period of time. And there's a great chance for students to be easily distracted by social media or other sites. And I think another key challenge of online classes is to make sure that students can make a smaller city's and the constant connection at decent speed. If I'm talking about online learning, I like it and dislike it at the same time.
I like it in the sense that maybe I can do it in my own time. But in a way, I kind of dislike it because I feel like a lot of work piles up. I don't know if that makes sense. But at least that's how I thought in the pandemic.
I just thought that there was a lot of work, a lot of work, a lot of work. It was very fast paced and sometimes I don't enjoy that. Though some people could argue that classes in person are like that as well. But oh well.
And as for the bridge, I really like this project. Sometimes I feel like it's the same thing. Sometimes I feel like I have to be better in staying on top of things. But I feel like it's a great way to connect other people from other cultures around the state or even from other countries.
And it's a good learning experience. So so far it's been good. It was very nice actually hearing different perspectives of the students about online learning and also about attending lectures physically, which is really cool hearing different perspectives. Some students prefer to attend physically while others prefer online.
You know, students have different opinions about their methods of receiving information, which is really nice. I totally agree with you. I think also being in the classroom and having discussion with other students in the classroom, you know, actually physically being there is so much more valuable than, you know, be online. You know, you have to like raise your hand or zoom or something.
And then, you know, it might be hard to interact with other people or nice easy. So that's definitely something I would emphasize too, is just that discussion with other students. You know, I feel like it is a lot easier and you get more out of it for being. Yeah, I do believe in the traditional method, you know, because by far it is much better than online learning.
I just feel that being in a classroom with other students is more important, more effective since we're all able to discuss and learn many things, not only from teachers and lecturers, but also from students as well, which is very nice actually. So before we close this episode, Chance, have you had any fun experience or challenges with online learning that you might want to share with us? Yeah, I would say a funny experience about online learning would have to be when I first started high school. So when I senior year of high school online during COVID, there would be a problem where kids would actually walk on to the zoom call and then fall asleep.
Like on the camera, so you have kids like sleeping in class, you know, it's not a good thing. It was just funny because like a professor would call their name for a tenant and like, they just wouldn't say anything because they're asleep, but technically still there because they're in the meeting. So that was just really, really funny, but also, you know, it just shows another thing online or a third challenging the engaging part with students is not there. Oh, actually, Chance, that is, I also had about this funny experience from many of the friends of mine.
So yeah, to close out the episode, I would say thank you Omar for your time and being here with me today and sharing our experiences with this topic. I think it's such a very interesting topic to be talked about. And yeah, I'm really, I'm really thankful we got this time to talk about this and I appreciate your time for working on the topic with me. Thank you, Chance very much.
Actually, it is my pleasure being with you today and hopefully we hear from you and we'll discuss such topics in the near future. Thank you very much. All this year, the Bridge is a collaboration among students and faculty from public universities and Yemen and the faculty and students at the University of Arizona. They participate in a nine month cultural exchange project in Yemen and the US.