By Jared Gudnason 

Writer/Reporter 

The last autonomous computer application class I took was 21 years ago to the month, in March of 2005. With the little amount of stress that I remember originating from the class, it wasn’t too indicative of the headache it would become.  

I don’t mind Zoom calls, given that they are one of the primary ways I received instruction before graduating with my bachelor’s almost two years ago. At times I found it a barrier to academic success, and that was mostly due to the inexplicitly vague method of how grading was shifted via technical modality. March of 2020 was the first time I had an in-person class shift to fully online in synchronous form, which includes meeting once a week on a designated day and time via Zoom. It was advanced editing in the basement of the Metro State Midway campus. Because there was a clearly laid out syllabus and editing is a very hands-on discipline – even though generative AI would arguably beg to differ – the course ended up being a great experience, and retired professor Brian Nerney was excellent. You can find his name on a plaque outside the Founders Hall Auditorium. 

What you must understand is that someone completing higher education goals in their late 30s was never equipped with proper opportunity to excel, digitally speaking, nor were they supposed to be. The previous class to the one held in 2005 was in seventh grade before the turn of the 21^st century. It was literally a class that focused on the proper operation of a keyboard. A time when cell phones were for parents only, and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets had just come out.  There were four Apple iMacs for us students to use, as in four for the whole student body.  

Now these seem like irrelevant points in our now-80-percent-digital-age. However, I brought it to light because it was foreshadowing. Current technology is a privilege for the wealthy. In between March 2020 and graduation in 2024, I was let down on accounts of technical illiteracy, and asynchronous lessons, a course method which includes no meetings.  

Digital learning has the opportunity to reach more potential students than ever before. But simultaneously, if the digital student is unaccustomed to the modality, it must not be taken lightly. Most importantly, I think that correspondence between instructor and student should be a main priority. Systems like D2L serve as a pathway to researching incredibly new and exciting topics, however, those could potentially be moot if the student doesn’t fully understand an assignment and does not receive a response to a sent email, unfortunately something that has happened to me personally. Asynchronicity can educate more students than ever before, but like any education system, communication is essential to success.