During 2020 the world was plunged into a global pandemic as Covid-19, or the Corona Virus, rapidly spread across the world (WHO, 2021). I, like many on my course, decided to continue with my enrolment at Writtle University College in September 2020 in the hopes that all would have settled down by then, it however, had not.

​

The pandemic posed many problems for our course as the practical side of things is very important for our learning experience. We found we were still allowed on site but the university decided to offer blended learning with a mixture of online and onsite. I found this to be both advantageous and a disadvantage to myself. While the online learning meant I did not have to travel down to the university, thus being able to dedicate more time to my studies, I found engaging in online lectures somewhat difficult. I had never experienced an online lecture and felt quite disconnected from the learning experience. This has been noted to be an existing issue regarding online teaching but there has been little solution offered to remedy it (Zheng et al., 2020). Therefore, I had to ensure that I was concentrating well, actively listening and taking notes so that I go the most out of my lectures as possible. However, I did find it extremely useful that the lectures were recorded and so I had the opportunity to go back and re-watch anything I had missed or needed to go over again. 

​

Our cohort faced ongoing issues with the corona virus pandemic as the year went on and are still facing them to date. We have had practical sessions and exams delayed or cancelled, assignments changed and pushed back, and a constant feeling of uncertainty and worry surrounding our first year as veterinary physiotherapy students. This anxiety has been well noted in many studies conducted throughout the pandemic,  specifically in students who's courses required hands on learning (Daumiller et al., 2021). 

​

Generally, I have felt the university handled the ever changing circumstances of our learning well, however an amount of disruption was going to occur regarding practical sessions. Due to various lockdown measures being in place across the UK, the majority of our practical anatomy sessions were delayed. As I have mentioned in my PDP SWOT analysis, I found anatomy to be one of my weaker areas and so was somewhat relying on the dissection's to cement the 2D learning into a 3D model as I am more of a hands on and visual learner. Due to this I had to dedicate more of my learning time to anatomy than I had planned, however this may not have been a bad thing. I also found using my own horse and apps on my phone particularly helpful for learning the location of the muscles and bony landmarks. The delay of practical dissection's also resulted in our anatomy portfolio and VIVA being pushed back. This may have been one of the few advantages of the whole situation as it provided more time for study and led to the dissections being quite close to the VIVA, meaning the information would still be fresh in my mind and so the exams would hopefully be somewhat easier for me to complete.

​

The main assignment to suffer due to the pandemic was our Biomechanics investigation. We were set an open research project to investigate changes in the gait or kinetics of either a horse or dog under certain circumstances. However, due to lockdown most of the students did not have personal access to an appropriate amount of horses or dogs to complete this project. Therefore we were given hypothetical scenarios with results data and we had to formulate a methodology that would produce these results and analyse them as if we had undertaken the project ourselves. This meant that we missed out on designing and producing our own research projects and did not gain experience of gathering results and working with the animals we were investigating. I was not particularly affected by this as, even though I chose to use the hypothetical scenarios, I had undertaken many research project investigations during my undergraduate degree (mainly my dissertation project) and so was quite familiar with the process, however I have no doubt that I would have enjoyed the assignment more if I had completed the research myself as opposed to being given predetermined data. 

​

​

References

​

Daumiller, M., Rinas, R., Hein, J., Janke, S., Dickhäuser, O., & Dresel, M. (2021). Shifting from face-to-face to online teaching during COVID-19: The role of university faculty achievement goals for attitudes towards this sudden change, and their relevance for burnout/engagement and student evaluations of teaching quality. Computers in Human Behavior, 118(September 2020), 106677. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2020.106677

​

World Health Organisation (WHO) (2021) Rolling Updates on Coronavirus Disease (Covid-19). [Online] https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/events-as-they-happen Accessed 16.03.2021 

​

Zheng, F., Khan, N. A., & Hussain, S. (2020). The COVID 19 pandemic and digital higher education: Exploring the impact of proactive personality on social capital through internet self-efficacy and online interaction quality. Children and Youth Services Review, 119(August), 105694. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2020.105694

​