By: Adam Meyer

For students with tougher schedules are they taking online classes to help them destress or is taking these online classes creating more stress?

Scheduling class around work and athletic schedules is difficult for students. What can help with this dilemma of students not being able to get into classes they need to be in, the answer for some are online courses. With over 40 undergraduate programs at Quincy University, students are given a wide variety of classes to choose from. Before choosing a major to study in, athletics comes first when scheduling is discussed.

With a high student-athlete population, Quincy University’s student’s schedules are set in stone by coaches and game days. When in season, student athletes will travel usually missing Friday courses making the student athletes miss class, but for some, online courses are viable to their success. Dana Walsh who plays women’s softball clarified that online classes do help.

“By having an online class I don’t have to show up to a specific time during the day that may be during one of my practices. School comes first, but when I miss a practice I have to make it up by myself in an already busy schedule that I have,” Walsh said.

While traveling on the road having the opportunity to still have class makes Walsh still feel as if she is gathering information that connects to her area of study.

Online classes are an opportunity for students to juggle different opportunities, wether that is sports, or past-time activities. Taking these classes are beneficial to students who also play sports because it decreases the stress of missing class because they are traveling.

Some students take online classes because another class would not work with their current schedule. 

Some classes are only offered online, for example, film and new media courses are all online. So any film and new media minors or any student taking a film class for an art credit, they will have to take their classes online.

“I’m taking an online class called history and theory of cinema. I like taking it and I’m nervous because I’m not strong in this field,” Sarah Brown said.

Brown, a freshman, explained that she found her online class easily on Moodle and explained how she is enjoying the class even though she does not know too much about films. 

Drake Mulenbeck, a sophomore transfer, is also in Brown’s online class and he explained how much he enjoys the ability to take a class at any time of the day.

Although online classes are valuable to students with tough schedules, they can also be used to cheat.

“Yes. I liked it because I could study in my own environment. However, it actually was harder to manage in my schedule. It’s easy to make an online less of a priority than your other classes. Also, I question how much material the students are actually learning. I know some students prefer online classes because of the opportunity to cheat,” Mary Argana said.

Cheating seemed to be a problem amongst the student body who are taking advantage of online classes. For instance, students can easily find answers to online tests by looking up the questions or even have their book open for an easier test. 

Although online classes have a positive impact on the student body there are some negatives. These negatives shouldn’t derail students from having the opportunity to make a better schedule for themselves.