As the end of fall semester approaches, some WSU students are looking back on the pros and cons of in-person versus online learning.

Coby Boyd, fifth-year civil engineering major, said online classes during the 2020-21 school year had their benefits.

Boyd said he was able to intern at the engineering firm Mead & Hunt in addition to his schoolwork; he assisted with their project at the Pullman-Moscow Regional Airport.

Boyd started his internship in May 2020 and worked through January 2021. Being able to take online classes during his internship allowed him to focus entirely on his workday, he said.

“I even had a class on the days I worked, but I was able to work anyway and watch the recorded lecture when I got home,” Boyd said. “Otherwise, I would have had to leave work, come back. Online made it all easier.”

Looking at midterms, Boyde said his grades remained steady from the transition from online learning back to in person.

While WSU is back in person, freshman psychology major Connor Chong said his classes still meet over Zoom sometimes because of various people getting exposed to COVID-19.

He said classes over Zoom do not necessarily provide nostalgia for online learning but are still tolerable.

“I’m just used to it,” Chong said.

Before coming to WSU, Chong said he spent his last year and a half of high school online. One of the biggest challenges he faced was reliable access to the internet.

When he could not connect to the internet at home, Chong said he was not sure how to proceed and complete his work.

“Honestly [the internet at WSU] is better than back home,” Chong said.

Despite the obvious challenges presented by the online format, Chong’s high school grades during the pandemic did not suffer too much. In fact, Chong said on some level, he is glad for the time spent online.

“It was like a big reset, and you could sort of see how you learned,” Chong said.

Chong said although he would get distracted from time to time, he used the time to gauge his learning style. He also enjoyed the extra time that resulted from online learning.

“The [grades] that were lower, like my math grade, I actually had time to work towards it, and I was able to boost it up,” Chong said.

Chong said he appreciated the amount of time and effort his high school teachers put into helping him and his peers learn.

High school teachers at Chong’s school also adopted practices like one-on-one office hours over Zoom to help students adjust to online learning, he said.