Challenges of Remote Learning from 5,843 miles away

When I found out we were going to be finishing our semester abroad from home through a remote learning approach I was not really certain what to expect. Would we continue to attend classes during class time, would we have tradition written final exams, would we still continue to learn new material? While remote learning seemed daunghting at first eventually all my questions were answered.

In my specific situation, due to a seven hour time difference, attending the couple remaining classes that I had was pretty challenging. Waking up at 4am to listen to my professors talk about quotes from an article that we were reading was very hard as I just wanted to go back to sleep especially since the rest of my family was still sound asleep. However after only having to wake up early three times, my professors decided that the we had covered enough in our classes to discontinue the online meetings.

While our online meetings were brief, the amount of work that followed that we were responsible for only seemed to increase. Due to the fact that we really could not have a final exam through the internet, most of my finals were turned into research papers. In a way I did kind of prefer this method as I was able to work at my own pace and turn in my papers as I finished them. During the regularly scheduled exam week, I had one timed test where I completed the math equations then typed them into Microsoft Word and submitted my final document to my teacher before a specific time period. In a similar fashion, I also had a timed written paper where I answered the question and then again handed my final document in before the time was up. For both of these ‘final exams’ I was given two hours to complete it and all of my professors made sure to start the study abroad students exams at a reasonable hour for us.

While leaving Greece early was not ideal, the professors at ACT and the study abroad staff made it really easy for us to complete our semesters despite the change of location.

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