It’s hard to believe that this is what the ONU campus looked like just a few months ago. For more than a week now professors and students have been at home adjusting to the new norm of online classes.
While some fields have had an easier transition online, others that require hands-on participation like engineering, found it a little challenging at first. This is especially the case after moving into the new state of the art James Lehr Kennedy Engineering Building last year.
“Doing demonstrations, doing projects, hands-on activities, and things like that have definitely been a challenge, but we’re still trying to make things as interactive as possible,” said France.
Many professors have had to think outside the box to ensure they are still engaging their students.
“We’re going in a good direction,” he said. “We’ve just been doing more calculations like computer-aided design and those types of engineering skills.”
France is applying this current learning situation to life in the field.
“Something that we stress to our students is to be flexible and be ready for changes so that if they’re working for a client and they change their mind then you got to be ready to adapt,” he said.
Besides taking questions about engineering lessons, France decided to present a question to his students.
“Tell me something that you miss most about being on campus and a lot of them said working with one another, seeing each other and a lot of them said the building as well,” he said. “So they miss being there.”
Although students are missing being on campus they are now learning different ways to communicate.
“People can’t just use their intuition as to what is going on because we’re not all on the same location, seeing the same things,” said John Navin, ONU College of Business Administration dean.
It is uncertain when students and professors will return to campus for face to face learning. But in the meantime, they are trying to make it work day by day.
