A whole new meaning to learning on the fly.

Most everyone and everything is changing by the hour with the COVID-19 crisis at hand. Any plans, important dates or schedules that college students had lined up for the rest of the school year have been flipped upside down.

Now what? For now, learning online is the only answer. Most classes use a program such as Zoom to perform video lectures, where both the professor and students can interact with each other.

Of course, it’s not the same as physically sitting at a desk on campus. And there are sometimes a few “learning curves” during the process.

Kody Kolnik is a 2017 Palmerton Area High School graduate and a junior at Moravian College in Bethlehem. Moravian turned to a complete online overhaul on March 16.

“Virtual learning is definitely harder than being in a classroom,” said Kolnik, a business management major. “It is harder to retain information along with taking notes. Homework is a challenge too, especially anything that has to do with math and showing your work. There’s many other distractions that you can have learning outside a classroom. The connection sometimes goes in-and-out with the abundance of conference rooms or Zoom rooms needed because of the epidemic. We have to try and make the best out of it under the challenging circumstances.”

Cody Scherer, a 2018 Lehighton Area High School graduate, agreed that it’s ideal to learn on campus.

“Going online isn’t the worst thing in the world but it isn’t the best either,” he said. “Not being able to have the individual access and help with professors in class is probably the biggest drawback for myself, and a lot of my other classmates feel the same way. You can do a lot of things quicker though, rather than having to sit through the whole class to learn something, or go over homework.”

Scherer is a sophomore at Kutztown University, majoring in business administration and finance. Kutztown extended its spring break, and then decided to implement online learning for the rest of the semester.

“The biggest challenge for us is probably just having the drive to do all the work and sit in our homes all day to do it,” he said. “There’s nothing we can do about it. Right now, we need to be safe and still work our way toward a degree.”

The “new norm” is an adjustment for students of all majors.

Brock Heckman, a 2016 Lehighton graduate, is a senior at Kutztown who faces a few unique challenges over the next couple of weeks. The music major has to get creative throughout the rest of his online experience in order to get his course credits.

“The biggest problem that I have is that every music major has to perform a recital during their junior or senior year,” Heckman said. “My senior recital was scheduled for the 28th and it got canceled. I’m currently working out an alternative option, where I record certain sections of my music and stitch them together. Whoever was supposed to perform in my recital could send me their audio clips and I’ll put them together for an online version. I’m excited to do that kind of project, but it’s tedious and I feel bad that I have to put those people I’m supposed to perform with in a situation like that right now.”

Jasmine Mooney, a sophomore at East Stroudsburg University, began online classes a week and a half ago. The 2018 Marian graduate is majoring in criminal justice. She said that online class provides a bit of flexibility.

“With some classes, you have the option of doing the assignments at any time, as long as it’s by the due date,” Mooney said. “It’s harder, because you have to keep yourself very disciplined and hold yourself accountable.”