Reimagining Online Classes

By Lcid Crescent Fernandez

As we have eased into online classes in the past few months with no timetable for face-to-face classes resuming soon (I am completely unwilling to attend face-to-face classes until medical solutions are found), our schools have valiantly attempted to migrate the educational system to the digital sphere.

However, instead of migrating systems, why don’t we try to reimagine online classes altogether?

Now that I’m a few days removed from our first round of exams, it is apparent to me that asynchronous classes are much better suited for this era of online classes for law school.

I understand that a lot of the focus (especially for us in the fourth year) is on the bar exam but I have had much better success and retention for classes that have required reading rather than classes that rely on lectures. I believe this is due to the difficulty of migrating the lecture/recit setting (a system designed for face-to-face) to the digital sphere. There are technical and connection problems that the Philippines just isn’t ready to address. People get left behind and a lot of the time spent by students is on trying to connect to the class.

I have heard from my professors that this is a make or break year for our individual study habits, and I agree wholeheartedly. It is my belief that instead of relying on our professors for online lectures which cause unnecessary stress on both sides, guidance on what material to read and problem-solving homework would be incredibly more beneficial. Online classes would then become a “kumustahan” dialogue of pacing and understanding of where everyone is and areas where they don’t understand within the modules we’re all going through. This would help us feel like we’re working with a team rather than going through classes alone day in and day out, and would actually help us in practice (90% of the profession is research as we have been constantly told earlier on).

Even exams themselves have been difficult with both the technical issues and the uncertainty of what the bar exams will look like. This is a year of innovation and adaptation. As a working student and a person who heads an industry-leading webinar-management company (Prometheus Productions), there is an amount of fatigue that creeps in and a lot of things become lost in translation with the audience/class.

I have been a bar buddy to several upperclassmen and brods, and the review process has been more reliant on them being guided to read relevant jurisprudence and topics as compared to lectures and recitations. This is the perfect time to translate the process of education to be guidance to the student’s efforts to study when they are out of class and to check on how they are doing when they are in class.

This changes the mindset of working outside of class and then looking forward to having a point of clarification in class. A reading list would be extremely beneficial for us students who are feeling a little lost outside of class trying to feel our way in the dark.

This is not a regular year. COVID has forced us to rethink our entire education system. Let’s reimagine how online classes work.