I’m Annika Forman and in September 2020 I made the decision to come to journalism school. I had another option. At the time I was considering a jazz music program. I chose journalism because I didn’t want to be a professional musician. But, back then, I also didn’t know we we were soon going to be under the cloud of a global pandemic. We still are. And learning during the pandemic changed everything. All the aspects of my undergrad that I had enjoyed were taken away: meeting up with friends to study, in-person lectures, and working out at the university gym. The multitude of changes left me feeling unsettled and disoriented. It felt like online school took the fun of student life away; all that was left was the work. There were personal impacts, as well. My home life was changing. I had to move out of my place and move in with my dad and step mom. And so it was, that in the Fall of 2020 I began my Masters of Journalism at Toronto Metropolitan University , completely online and, well, it was challenging. Annika Forman: Before the semester began, I wondered how others in j-schools were managing. Wasn’t this a degree that required human interaction? How would we learn the skills so critical to becoming a journalist through an all-online experience? I spoke with Isabel Harder, a third year journalism undergrad who is also pursuing a minor in law at Carleton University. How was it for her transitioning from in-person to online learning, I asked. Isabel Harder- “I was really nervous about … J-school being online and my ability to actually do things. …I remember, like I attended a couple meetings and info sessions about what J-school would would look like online and I was really hopeful that it would be like still engaging and I’d get the same experience that I would in a normal year. I don’t think I did but I was hopeful.” Chapter 2 - September-December 2020 Annika Forman - I was now in school. I saw others around me with similar -- or even more challenging -- circumstances. Jeremy Yudin was heading into his third year in journalism school at Humber College. He said the experience was completely different online and he did not feel like a journalist doing the program in that format. Jeremy Yudin “Normally we would have, this is for my TV course, so we’d be in the control room, we would literally be on camera throwing to each other being like now back to you Jeremy, like that kind of thing, normally we would’ve been doing that but the show, the whole like show became online through like Adobe and we didn't even put it together, one of the assistance or profs or whatever put it all together, we just sent it to her and we literally recorded ourselves at home with our own phone on a blank background and I had to literally press play and then walk over and then angle myself right and then test it out and then go back and see if it actually worked right so I have like hundreds of clips of me just testing it out, if none of this pandemic thing happened I would have had someone helping me right so, you know.” Diary Entry - What I’m struggling with most is the extent of independent work involved. It might be good training for journalists but I often find independent work harder. I also find journalism more difficult to do because I have less access to the technology I need to do it. Forming connections with classmates is also more difficult online, which makes finding partners for group work more complicated. I find myself sometimes struggling with time management and energy getting low. I began having one class in-person at the beginning of my second year of studies. I found classes were fairly quiet, not a lot of people asked questions, and students didn't talk to each other much. Annika Forman: Isabel Harder had a similar experience Isabel Harder:“ more communication between professors and students and between like students themselves like I think as much as I am not a super fan of group work at times I do think it would have been really beneficial to do more group work kind of as a motivating factor ‘cause it’s hard to motivate yourself when you’re at home in your childhood bedroom doing university online.” Annika Forman - Veronique Morin had just started a masters degree in journalism at Concordia University in Montreal in the summer. Being isolated in online school left her feeling like she wasn't keeping up with her classmates. Veronique Morin -“first assignment you call someone from bank, you have to do something about the stocks, the stock market in Toronto, then you have to call the police and stuff and like when you’re home alone doing those stuff that you’ve never done and you’re just scared about calling all those strangers you don’t know it’s still scary to do it by yourself so like starting at home, online was really, really hard I felt because I couldn’t share my experience with anyone and in class, since we’re all on Zoom, all people who are sharing their experiences and assignments were just saying how amazing it was, how easy, how they got so great sources and it was like that’s not my case.” Annika Forman - The transition from "in real life" to online didn't just take its toll on students. I wondered what it was like for staff members at the university. I thought immediately of Angela Glover, a news media production specialist for the school of journalism, who provides technical and sound guidance to our podcast team, and who has coached me for audio. Angela Glover - “Switching to an actual online classroom was challenging at first because I like people, I'm a people person that is simply my personality and I like seeing people. I think you know seeing and communicating is you know hand in glove kind of thing so it was different to look at a bunch of black boxes where nobody had their cameras turned on and it was like you were talking into the void, that could be challenging plus it was a scary time, none of us knew what was happening and at first it was kind of like see you in two or three weeks didn’t quite work out that way, but at first we really didn’t know right and we didn’t know much about the disease yet, we didn’t know much about how long obviously we would be away and how much of an adjustment it would be. I guess we were lucky that we were as close to the end of the year, the school year as we were, I think we had like five weeks or something to go through, four weeks four weeks maybe , I can’t I can’t quite remember but we were fairly close to the end of the school year. You know happening in March is very different than happening in October. So it was kind of do what we could to get through to the end of the school year and support the students and make sure they had what they needed and then regroup in May and it was like okay, now what.” The university was also trying to figure out how to deliver lectures and labs online. Let’s take a look at the numbers and what it cost the university to make this transition. The numbers here pertain to the university overall but the School of Journalism follows that same pattern according to J-School Interim Co-Chair and Associate Professor Gavin Adamson . Toronto Metropolitan University faced a one-time only deficit of $20.7M resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic according to notes from the Board of Governors meeting on June 29, 2021. The day-to-day operating budget of the university was also impacted. Significant losses occurred due to increased costs and expenses. These included the virtualization of courses, the increased hiring of TAs and IT staff to ensure online classes ran smoothly, and the purchasing of personal protective equipment. There were also losses from ancillary business such as decreased use of residence, food, retail operations, athletic centres, and parking. Student enrollment and course loads actually increased among domestic, undergraduate students, exceeding the original budget by $19M. International student tuition didn’t drop as substantially as one might think with only a $2M loss in revenue. In total, the COVID-19 pandemic cost the university $23.2M. Diary Entry - Personally. I found it unfair I had to pay regular tuition when the program was fully online in the first year. I wasn’t able to access all the facilities, resources, study space in-person but I still had to pay full tuition. I was paying for things I wasn’t actually able to use. Some of the fees could have been returned to compensate for the resources we couldn’t access. The university says we were able to access them online to the same effect but I didn’t find the online format as conducive to my learning or success. I should’ve gotten a reduction in tuition to compensate for what I lost. Annika Forman - Not everyone is concerned about online education weakening our capacity to tell important stories well. I spoke with Ivor Shapiro, a professor emeritus at the University's school of journalism. He's also a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Free Expression. He says having classes online might in fact be good training for students as they enter professional newsrooms. Professor Emeritus Shapiro -“You know the virtual newsroom is not necessarily a product of Covid right. There are there are many publications that only have virtual newsrooms, right, the idea that you use the technologies available to you, your phone, your computer, and you kinda get that story and you interact with your sources using that technology is a really important part, the idea of learning how to interact with your colleagues in a virtual way, with your editor in a virtual way, well how do you think foreign correspondents interact with their editors, you know or even okay… well how does the Winnipeg bureau chief interact with the editor of the Globe and Mail? You know, it’s like this is actually the way of life.” Annika Forman - But I was more concerned about the social interaction and the ability to discuss assignments with peers. He agreed that those aspects of in-person education are invaluable. Professor Emeritus Shapiro - “I walked out of my class this morning and there were seven students in the room talking to one another, I wish they were talking about my class but no they weren’t they were talking about their assignments for Covering the City but they were there talking about the various issues they were having with sources and whatever, that’s huge, it’s a huge part of the benefit of being at a university. You know and then perhaps they’ll go to a bar later and you know talk about relationships or or movies, you know, that’s also a big part of it, you’re forming a community and and twenty years from now they may still be friends and colleagues or mentors to each other.” Annika Forman- As it turns out, online learning isn't new. There are entire degree programs that are offered only online and distance or remote learning has opened up all kinds of opportunities for education. It's helped everyone from children living in remote villages to adults living in cities who work fulltime and need to study after hours. Like most things in life both online learning and in-person learning have pros and cons. Professor Lorna Erwin is an Associate Professor of Sociology at York University. Due to poor audio I will recite Professor Erwin’s quote. Professor Lorna Erwin -“From the perspective of the person teaching [online] is much more draining because you don’t have that adrenaline you get when face-to-face so I’m usually invigorated after I’m finished teaching you get an adrenaline rush but on Zoom all going one way, you’re trying to monitor the discussion, I think it’s much more taxing.” Annika Forman: I related to this as a student. After doing the first year of my journalism program completely online, it did feel onerous after a while. Instead of feeling energised from class, with Zoom classes and lots of individual work, it felt the opposite. Professor Clare Brett is the Chair of the Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. She explained the different types of learning environments. Professor Clare Brett - “Every learning environment has you know suits some people better than others. Like some people like asynchronous online discussion which is an online discussion environment instead of synchronous which is what we’re having right now and for some learners it’s helpful because they can choose when they’re going to read and then respond to something and it gives them lots and lots of time in which to do that craft a response and write it and do that. Others find that that’s a terrible environment because you’re always responsible for going in and doing that work, there’s no pressure from you from the outside to sort of help you move through things. And then and synchronous environments like this one have their own problems because they can be, not everybody’s got the same level of access, you’re very dependent on the quality of your internet connection and you know the width of the pipes, the signal strength and there can be real interruptions to learning when that isn’t, when that goes wrong and people can get frustrated and lose track of the thread of what was being talked about and that kind of thing and then there are other issues around connection where these days, where people are joining from home there can be all sorts of things going on in your house or right behind that you don’t necessarily want people you’re in class with to be seeing and so I think people started out, I know our instructions and in other places too with this assumption that that’s alright everyone’s gonna have their cameras on, it’s just like class but you’re at home but it isn’t it isn't’ and and not and people are discomforted by that and I think it effects particular you know disadvantaged groups specifically you know you don’t have a nice, quiet place in which you can study and interact with people so we’ve learned these kinds of lessons over the year I think...You have to be very mindful of who is interacting with you, who is in your class and what are their needs and be very flexible in what you expect.” Annika Forman: When you’re in-person, you can read the room, she says. Professor Brett:“ different kinds of energy when you’re sitting in a group and talking about something.”“There’s something about the immediacy of just being connected in a room that is very hard to simulate online.”“There’s the kind of I know connectivity that comes from in-person interaction with people that you kind of you miss after a while especially and the lockdown has been very intense for that so that we’ve lost a lot of that experience or it’s been so reduced after the last year and a half.” Chapter 4 - December 2021: What Comes Next Diary Entry - Dr. Mohamed Lachemi, Toronto Metropolitan University president and vice-chancellor, gave an update on October 26, 2021 the university will be broadening its opening come January 2022. A majority of classes will be delivered in-person while providing hybrid and online courses for students who require them. I am excited that school has re-opened. As the Master’s program comes to a close, I’m finally getting the experience I signed up for. This includes being able to go to campus much more often and for it to become a much more ingrained part of my life. I like seeing my classmates in-person, some again and some for the first time. I am happy I have met some of my teachers in-person. I like the ease with which I am able to access buildings and resources. I can walk to Balzac’s and get a tea, stroll to the library and study or access the Career Centre, each of which are new experiences for me. I also like how the Rogers Communication Centre, where the journalism program is housed, is a much more lively place and has come to feel more like home. The day has come when I can walk from the Equipment Distribution Centre to the Allan Slaight Radio Institute and then the Toronto Star Centre for Reporting in a way that feels intuitive and natural. I missed this experience so much through the pandemic. I also know that online learning isn’t for me. Annika Forman - I’m Annika Forman, the host and producer of this special episode of Pull Quotes. My teammates on the podcast are Gabe Oatley, Rahaf Farawi, and Andrew Oliphant. Special thanks to handling editor Naheed Mustafa, Angela Glover who provides technical and audio support, and Lindsay Hannah who provides web support. Our executive producer is Sonya Fatah and music is by Harrison Amer. Thanks for listening and take care.