The number of infected patients with COVID-19 has brought with it many changes to this school year. 

With the pandemic taking over Tulare County back in March, our formal way of attending classes was immediately moved from in-person instruction to online instruction. After receiving the call stating that campuses are to be shut down and classes are to remain online the rest of the semester, faculty and staff started to panic. 

For some professors, this transition was smoothly operated, but for some professors the stress was suddenly starting to arise.

Now that the Fall semester has arrived, professors and students are slowly easing their way into navigating classes via Zoom conferences. Not every course is required to attend Zoom meetings, but the process of being assigned class work while not even meeting with a professor can be challenging. 

Juan Arzola ,Political Science professor, said, “The transition from in-person to online was not difficult at all. I’ve taught online in years past, so making this change was easy.” 

On the other hand, Philosophy professor Timothy Houk stated, “I only had 48 hours to make this transition, so moving all my lessons to online was very stressful.” 

However, both professors did find some advantages to distant learning. Arzola and Houk agreed that this form of learning has some great flexibility.

Communications professor Robin McGehee received her certificate to instruct online, so she already knew the steps for transitioning her courses to online. 

History professor Camille Tomlin also agrees transitioning online wasn’t entirely difficult since she was already teaching her classes to work from Canvas and presenting ways to work around the assignments and announcements posted. 

While professor Houk had some struggles with transitioning, all four professors similarly stated that this is a continued learning experience as we move forward in the Fall.

While it seems during this pandemic that the whole world is going to collapse, having each other side by side and lending a helping hand once in a while has made staff and faculty members stronger in dealing with the distance learning environment.