In Romero-Ivanova’s Digital Practices & Applications in a Covid-19 Culture, the paper attempts to portray the challenges, stress, and difficulties that the pandemic presented students and faculty with.

This paper took an interesting approach of a preliminary exploratory study and offered many different perspectives on the struggles that were faced during the pandemic. Specifically, the paper began with recounting the moment the world was declared in a global pandemic, and the learning community was forced to move to a virtual platform overnight. New norms were created and the struggles of both instructors and students were highlighted. Instructors, early on, were faced with the largest challenge of both learning the system themselves while having to educate students and help cope with the unprecedented times. From the student perspective, it was recounted that students were frustrated about paying full tuition for a mere virtual setting. The virtual setting offered a lot of uncertainties at the beginning but as the range of emotions varied, people came together with the mentality that “we are all in this together.” Formality decreased and the restructuring of the virtual classroom became a very positive experience for both students and faculty.

While the paper emphasizes the large struggle that was faced when switching to a completely virtual classroom setting, it also reflects on the engagement and interactivity styles that were discovered due to the consistent virtual environment. This paper is seen as a reflection of the pandemic and it shows us how much the education system can be modified. Personally, I really liked the testimonials that were given by students and the quotations that were provided from the faculty were extremely eye-opening. Until taking a step back and reading something like this that puts our experience into perspective, you really don’t realize how quickly our virtual world has accelerated.