At community colleges, online classes remain popular years after pandemic
At community colleges, online classes remain popular years after pandemic
Ricardo Alcaraz is taking three of his five courses online this semester at Santa Ana College: an anthropology class, business calculus and business law. It’s a course schedule that reflects a new reality and shift toward distance learning across California’s community colleges, largely sparked by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Taking classes online, though, isn’t ideal for Alcaraz, who is majoring in business administration and plans to transfer to Cal State Fullerton this fall. He enjoys in-person classes because he likes to arrive early and ask questions of his professors. His online classes, on the other hand, are asynchronous, meaning there’s no live instruction, and he has to direct his questions via email.
But like hundreds of thousands of other students in California, Alcaraz opts to enroll in many online classes because they fit better into his schedule. While enrolled at Santa Ana, he has worked up to 20 hours a week at the college’s Undocu-Scholars Center, a resource center for the college’s undocumented students. He’s also the student trustee for the Rancho Santiago Community College District, requiring him to be at board meetings and many campus events.
“It’s been hard to adapt to online classes. But due to how busy I’ve been and needing to be present in different areas, I feel like it’s been very helpful in a way,” he said.
During the pandemic five years ago, a significant majority of California community classes shifted online. Despite some early confusion and bumps in adapting to online education, distance education has firmly taken hold in the years since.
More than 40% of community college classes remain online statewide as of this year, about double what it was before the pandemic, and a much higher rate of remote education than exists at the state’s four-year universities. That includes hybrid classes, which mix online and some required in-person instruction. Some colleges also offer HyFlex courses, which give students the option of attending online or in person. The vast majority of the system’s online classes, however, are taught fully online and asynchronously. Click here to read full article
