Jeon Eun-chae, a professor at the University of Ulsan in Ulsan, 414 kilometers southeast of Seoul, records his lectures in one of the school’s lecture rooms on March 12, 2020. (Yonhap)
SEOUL, March 16 (Korea Bizwire) — Universities are postponing the school year and plan to replace lectures with online courses due to the coronavirus outbreak.
Students, in turn, are concerned over the risk of a drop in the quality of the education they’re paying for.
Students at Sungkyunkwan University, which began a new semester on March 9, complained that the online courses “fell far behind the quality of offline lectures.”
Students complained that they couldn’t ask professors questions during online classes, and the curriculum used in these lectures lacked in quality.
“It’s good that I can listen to these lectures whenever I want, but it was difficult to ask questions if there are parts that I don’t understand,” one student said. “The video and sound quality of some online courses were very poor.”
Professors, too, were still trying to adjust to the current state of affairs.
“It was the first time for many professors to carry out online lectures for two straight weeks,” said Prof. Lee Young-jun at Kyung Hee University. “Some senior professors are struggling with the use of platforms for online courses.”
Some professors, feeling too ‘awkward’ to give lectures in an empty classroom, invited other professors to give feedback on their lectures.
Since online courses don’t require students to show up in class, some students were found to procrastinate, many of whom piled up online lectures to watch all at once at a later time.
Students at universities starting their school year on March 16 are worried that they might face the same issue.
“Some lectures use video lecture platforms. Some use YouTube,” a student from Seoul National University said. “Each lecture has different ways to submit projects and check attendance. It’s leaving us all confused.”
Experts are voicing the need to work on current issues surrounding online courses.
“Part-time lecturers, unlike full-time professors, don’t have the space to videotape their lectures,” said Prof. Koo Jeong-woo from Sungkyunkwan University.
“Universities using these video lectures, an intellectual property of the professors, should also work on resolving copyright issues for further use.”
H. M. Kang (hmkang@koreabizwire.com)
