How do you study at home during class suspension?

During the epidemic period, all University of Macau (UM) students should stay home to protect themselves from coronavirus infection. This is not only an act to care for themselves, but also considered a contribution to society as well as concrete support for frontline medical personnel. During class suspension, students are encouraged to keep learning at home using UM’s online resources. Some of these resources are also available to the general public. They are listed as follows:

– Some electronic resources of the UM Library that allow public access.

– The general public can register for massive open online courses (MOOC) created by UM experts and scholars on XuetangX for free.

– Students can access distance learning materials, including lectures and discussions, on UM’s Moodle online learning platform. If necessary, students can also submit homework assignments and answers to test questions via the platform.

– Students can make use of the UM Library’s various electronic resources, including e-books, e-journals, and online database to study at home. (Links to these online learning platforms will be available at the end of this article)

To learn more about how students study at home during class suspension, UM Reporters from MyUM interview several of them who are currently located in Wuhan, Foshan, and Macao via WeChat.

Wuhan Student Keeps Learning during Epidemic Period

At the beginning of the Chinese New Year holiday, Jimmy Lei, a second-year student from the Department of Accounting and Information Management and Cheng Yu Tung College, returned home to Wuhan, Hubei province, to spend the holiday. From Lei’s observation, frontline medical personnel in the coronavirus epicentre are very busy, but the city is relatively calm at the moment. According to him, a regular person in Wuhan would spend the day between the bedroom and the dining room, although sometimes one would also go to the balcony to get some fresh air, do some stretches, and greet the neighbours living across the street. ‘There are not many people on the street now,’ says Lei. ‘My parents go to the supermarket twice a week to buy daily necessities and food. We always use alcohol to sanitise items at home before using them to ensure health and safety.’

Although Lei has been emotionally affected about the epidemic, he tries to keep himself busy by using online resources provided by UM to study at home. For example, he reads e-books available from the UM Library on a regular basis. Before the holiday, he had downloaded some e-books for reading at home. He also uses the forum on the UM Moodle learning platform to exchange ideas with faculty members and students.

Creating Atmosphere for Learning English at Home

Emma Li, a third-year student of financial controllership from the Faculty of Business Administration and Chao Kuang Piu College, lives in Foshan, Guangdong province. According to her, people in the city have become very tense since the outbreak started. In this semester, Li originally planned to study hard for courses in her major and take the IELTS and GMAT tests, in order to prepare herself for postgraduate studies. Affected by the epidemic, UM students cannot return to the campus at the moment, so Li has to study at home. She has created a study plan to follow on a daily basis. For courses in her major, Li uses notes and book chapters uploaded by professors to the UM Moodle system to complement her self-studies. ‘I try to create an atmosphere for learning English at home,’ says Li. ‘It helps me stay interested and motivated in learning so that I will be able to keep pace with the schedule when classes resume at UM.’

Being Self-disciplined with Studying

Ronald Wan, a second-year student from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Moon Chun Memorial College, is a native of Macao. He planned to do well in school in this semester in order to qualify for overseas exchange programmes next year. However, because of the epidemic, he has to complete this study plan at home. To motivate himself, Wan has put together a schedule to increase self-discipline. ‘Studying alone at home is difficult because it lacks the learning atmosphere from a class setting,’ says Wan. ‘It requires a lot of self-discipline.’

Steven Zhou is a student from the Master of Arts in Second Language Acquisition programme offered by the Faculty of Arts of Humanities. According to Zhou, although he cannot physically access library materials or do research in UM’s library at the moment because of the epidemic, the library has made it very easy to access its various resources using advanced methods. Therefore, UM students at different locations can still access the library and keep learning at home. ‘Thanks to the remote operating system, I can freely access information available in the library,’ says Zhou. ‘I am very grateful to the university for building an online learning platform with quick access to various library material.’

UM online learning resources:

Online database (available to the public)

https://library.umac.mo/html/databases/oa_e_db.asp?from=singlemessage&isappinstalled=0

UM MOOC courses (available to the public)

https://www.xuetangx.com/courses/course-v1:UMX+CRT101+2018_T4/about

 UM Moodle learning platform (only available to UM faculty members and students)

https://ummoodle.um.edu.mo/

e-books (only available to UM faculty members and students) 

https://umac-primo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/primo-explore/search?vid=853UOM_EBOOK

e-journals (only available to UM faculty members and students)

https://sfx-853uom.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/853uom/journalsearch?lang=eng

Online database (only available to UM faculty members and students)

https://library.umac.mo/html/databases/e_databases.asp

Distance learning quick start guide for students (only available to UM students)

https://icto.um.edu.mo/teaching-learning-research/a-distance-learning-quick-start-guide-for-students/

UM Students can click here to read the Distance Learning Quick Start Guide for Students.

For enquiries on UM’s e-books, e-journals, and online database, please email to lib_ref@um.edu.mo.

UM will continue to release the latest updates on the webpage of its Task force for Pneumonia Prevention and Control (https://www.um.edu.mo/zh-hant/task-force-for-pneumonia-prevention-and-control.html). Please stay tuned.