As they continue to adapt to new ways of working, our students share their thoughts on this learning curve.
Studying at home and accessing University resources remotely brings its own challenges and rewards. We know this isn’t how many of you imagined University life, but as we all work together to combat Covid-19, our students are sharing how they’ve found studying from home, and how Queen Mary has helped them adapt.
"Queen Mary offered a detailed online course with high quality recorded lecture sessions, regular one on one conference calls, and all study modules have lecture power-point slide notes of all lectures. I think Queen Mary is unique for its state of the art modern approach and advanced technology it offers for its online courses, which runs very parallel to the on site university courses, making distance learning more realistic than virtual learning elsewhere.
"It has given me access to almost all my Research literature or information, i have had easy and free access to journals, published articles, DATAbases like, PUBMED and endnote application was available for me to enable me to do my research project."
"What makes Queen Mary so unique is that it provides on-demand access to lecture videos. From any PC or Mac you can access the University library which is a gateway to the entire array of Nature, Cell, Science, and other high impact journals that are pivotal for higher degrees in science and medicine. As a valedictorian in medical school and someone who has been educated in four different nations, I can reassure you that the Queen Mary will be the best choice for anyone wanting to establish a career in the sciences or medicine.
"Queen Mary has an online interface known as Qmplus which provides all the tools to access lecture videos and PowerPoint presentations from anywhere in the world round the clock. It has a dedicated IT team to email if there are any challenges in accessing the content. Queen Mary also provides a free license to several different softwares to complement the learning experience."
“Studying from home has been a challenging yet insightful experience."— Zoe Malik, 3rd-year English Language and Linguistics
“Studying from home has been a challenging yet insightful experience as I have been able to better understand the class content and engage more closely with what I have to do by studying through my notes and going over previous class handouts, slides and additional readings. This is because there is no longer the same kind of support as there would be when you are face to face with your tutors so being able to get my head around certain problem sets, data and puzzles has been both an awakening and refreshing experience.
"I have definitely been feeling more productive when doing my assignments as I am engaging more with new information and enhancing my knowledge in that particular module, which is always uplifting and internally satisfying. It can also get tiresome – it’s important to take care of your wellbeing and health by ensuring you have regular breaks when you feel it is necessary, without having to strain your eyes or rush through your answers. When to take your break is something that works differently for everyone; some find taking breaks every 20 minutes is best and others can go hours before taking a break.
"I am a Unibuddy ambassador so feel free to message me directly with any questions regarding university experience on the platform."
“Lockdown life has made many aspects of the daily routine difficult, including keeping up with university work. Apart from the obvious lack of face to face lectures, I’ve missed the everyday interactions I would have with my friends at uni where we discuss a tricky topic or just talk about being hungry!
Be proactive, open-minded and engage with this new way of learning!— Shreya Suresh, 2nd-year Medical Genetics
"However, I’ve realised that a big part of studying well at home is having the right attitude and mindset. I was definitely a bit stubborn and reluctant at first because like many of us, I was just so unsure as to how this would all work! But I’ve found that by being more open-minded and spending some time learning how to navigate certain platforms that I hadn’t used has made keeping up with work a lot easier and enjoyable.
"Apart from the general tips of taking breaks, exercising/going outside and keeping in contact with friends and family. The best advice I can give is to really be proactive, open-minded and engage with this new way of learning! My name is Shreya and I’m happy to answer any questions you may have on Unibuddy."
“First of all, I hope everyone reading this is well, and if you have any questions about history or student life at Queen Mary, feel free to ask me on Unibuddy.
"I am sitting down to write this having just submitted my final assignment of second year! Although it’s still a time to celebrate, things are undoubtedly very different to how I, and I’m sure we all, would have liked. When I started the second year of my history degree at Queen Mary in September, I didn’t expect to be finishing it from my childhood bedroom in my small home-town rather than in Mile End library, surrounded by fellow students and course-mates. The transition to online learning has been an interesting learning curve to say the least.
"When I left my uni house in March, I left several books in it too, not knowing that I would not be coming back to use them in time for my deadlines. Luckily Queen Mary’s online library has served me well; even though scrolling through digitised pages is not the same as flicking backwards and forwards in a physical book, the information I needed for my essays was mostly present in e-books. When not all books were available on-screen, I found myself relying more on online journal articles, and thanks to the reading lists put out by my tutors there were plenty of these to go around.
"The support from friends and tutors in the History department felt stronger even though they were further away. Although it’s not ideal, online learning has proven how flexible we can all be, and will hopefully make us never take a physical lecture or seminar for granted again!”