SAIT students reach out for help with their online classes, and with an increased demand, SAIT Student Services are busier than ever before.
“Our numbers for accessibility have more than doubled from last year,” said Lenore Norris, manager of the Lamb Learner Success Centre, on a Microsoft Teams video call.
“We were really surprised by the number of students who came by our booth,” said Norris, speaking on the SAIT orientation that was on campus for the first time since 2019, adding, “We were really pleased about the level of interest and the number of students coming by and inquiring about the services.”
Students requesting guidance after classes start is typical, but the uptick was noticeable because the year before saw, according to Norris, about a “twenty per cent” drop in students accessing their services, and in the overall attendance at SAIT.
“We had a lot of people that deferred coming to school,” said Norris, adding, “I think our numbers dropped all around [SAIT].”
Joseph Hudson, an academic coach with SAIT who works out of the Lamb Learner Success Centre, said he hasn’t seen a decrease in his meetings with students; rather, the focus of his sessions has been about adapting to online learning.
“It’s almost a 50/50 split,” said Hudson, of students that enjoy online learning versus those that have a hard time learning online, with “…maybe a [few] more students saying they’ve had a harder time adjusting to the online world.”
The students that struggle with online learning are mature students, and students fresh out of high school, with some reasons being technical (how to use the online technology), to students not approaching their learning in the same way they would if in-person.
Hudson said, “Some students don’t go through that same level of preparation for online than they would have if it was face to face.”