Online Learning: Tips (and Lesson Learned) from Edinburgh

It has been two weeks since the first year student started the 2nd semester at Lund, and for the time being the classes are being held online. While there were many e-learning platforms even in the pre-Covid times, I believe for some of us this was our first experience in enrolling in online classes, doing a distanced learning. I figured that maybe some of us are still struggling to get used to it, especially with new lecture styles (live or pre-record), modules, etc. So I asked the students who spent the first semester in Edinburgh (Young, Sabrina, Han, Antariksh, Timo, and Matthew) their number one tip for online classes based on our experience in Edinburgh.

Treat it like it’s offline (pay attention, take notes, set other stuffs to sleep mode)

One of the core advice we’d love to give is do not take classes lightly just because it is online. There is a striking difference when you take your classes online. To me sometimes it does feels like there is a separate reality. When there are other stuffs happening in a close proximity, these other stuffs seem like they are the urgent stuffs I need to handle right away. A WhatsApp notification, a new email, noises from your flat mate, or sometimes a mail man. We are currently living in a world full of distraction, so minimizing it with setting your other device into sleep mode will be very helpful. Commit yourself to the lecture by taking notes so that taking lecture notes become ‘the urgent activity’ in your physical world. To Han, writing and posting quick notes he learned from each lectures had helped him to develop more understanding of the materials.

Invest in space, tools, and… internet connection

The first step of treating a virtual class like a real one is by setting up your study space, since watching the lectures in bed might tempt you to lay down and eventually sleep. Especially when the weather in Edinburgh most of the time forces you to crawl into your bed. For Matthew, he found it easier to do the virtual classes at a place other than his bedroom to get into the classroom mindset. Investing in tools such as headphones, so that noises from the outside are canceled and you have less distraction, will be good. The other thing I noticed people are complaining about is the neck pain they got (including me), because of the laptop’s screen view that is lower than the eye level. Therefore, setting it to the eye level (if you do not use a monitor), will make online lectures and doing assignment more convenient. I recently bought a laptop stand with an adjustable height and angle, and I noticed how nifty it is. For us who are using glasses, getting anti-reflection, blue-light-blocking lenses, would help in reducing eye strain that we are getting from the long hours of online lectures, readings, and doing assignments. Quoting from Young, “gone are the days of heaps of papers and pens…”, It would also be great if you can invest on tabs and its pen, since most of the materials are not printed and digital notes are easier to organized. Another plus point: you can carry all of them in one hand and you don’t have to worry about losing your notes. But then again, choose the one that suits you the most. The last, but the very essential thing you need when you have online classes, as was highlighted by Antariksh, is no other than a good internet connection. Even though I know that at some points, this is a variable we cannot really control anyway.

When there is time to rest, get off of your screen

Online learning is overwhelming at times, and the long hours of staying in front of your screen causes neck strain, back pain, and strained-eye for some. While watching tv series or playing games online might be the quickest getaway from studying, going out of her room helped Sabrina the most. And I couldn’t agree more. We are living in an age where learning is done digitally, the same goes with reading books or connecting with people. Even on these days, home exercise with watching tutorials online is becoming the trend. After lectures are done, we open our phones, or then moved to the front of our tv; we’re just moving from one screen to another. Therefore doing activities that does not require a screen presence such as cooking or baking is such a stress-reliever. Going out for a walk, meeting friends (following the current local guidance), exercising, getting a coffee and your daily dose of vitamin D, would help to maintain wellness (especially your mental health) in times like this. Try to go out and off-screen as much as possible.

Find a study partner: discuss

One of the hardest thing about attending an online class is feeling like you are learning on your own. Therefore, Timo’s number one tip is to stay in contact with your classmates and discuss with them. Find yourself a study partner, set up discussion virtually or in-person. These discussions are actually encouraged by the instructors in class, but doing it virtually might be awkward at first. But believe me, the discussion with IMFSE friends outside the class is one of the most valuable resources to learn! So make sure not to miss out on that because of the absence of the in-person class.

It’s a long overdue post but, cheers from us who were in Edinburgh! (featuring a photoshopped Han :D)

How long do people take to evacuate a building in a fire scenario?

The subject of how humans behave when a fire happens personally fascinates me, so I thought I would share a little information about it – enjoy!

The goals of fire safety design are to protect people, property and the environment from the effects of fire. In a performance-based design, to protect people, the time it takes for people to move to a place of safety, or the required safe evacuation time (RSET), has to be less than the time it takes for the fire to create untenable conditions, or the available safe evacuation time (ASET).  A summary is shown in the figure below:

The ASET is relatively easy to estimate as fire and smoke follow certain physical laws. The time when this is reached could be from heat, toxicity of the smoke or poor visibility. Computational Fluid Dynamics software can accurately show how the smoke and heat will move. Furthermore, from previous fire tests, a given piece of fuel’s heat release rate and how much soot and toxic products will be produced can be estimated.

The RSET is comprised of the time in which fire is detected, the occupants alarmed, the occupants deciding to move and the occupants reaching the place of safety. This can be a lot more difficult to predict as humans behave in a much more complicated manner than a fire does.  

Think about the last time you heard an alarm, did you start moving immediately as soon as you heard it? Unfortunately, the answer is, most likely, no. This time between hearing an alarm and moving towards safety is known as the Pre-movement Time and it can vary greatly. Studies have shown that social influence can greatly affect this. Compared to if they were on their own, a person is more likely to start moving if the people around them are, and vice-versa if they are not. They could also be looking for further information or significant others before trying to escape. Risk perception also can vary within individuals, hence one person might be quicker to deem a scenario as an emergency than another. If an occupant is pre-occupied with something they deem important when the alarm starts they will also take longer to move. An example of this is a case study in a Scottish airport where, after passengers started to move when hearing an alarm and seeing a small amount of smoke, they then sat back down so as not to miss their flight.  

The alarm itself can also be a factor in the variation of pre-movement time. Voice alarms have proved to perform better as they give clearer information. Experiments have also shown that using the word “fire” itself speeds up the pre-evacuation time as it helps the occupants understand the alarm and, contrary to belief, does not produce “panic”. Fire drills can be useful to guide people on what to do in an evacuation, but too many drills or false alarms can increase the pre-evacuation time as there is no urgency.

What about the movement time itself? From experiments we can estimate what an occupants speed through various building elements will be based on their characteristics, and how much space each person tends to use in an evacuation scenario. However, there are still some discrepancies here. For example, the Theory of Affiliation states that in an emergency scenario, people are more likely to take exits they are familiar with. This could mean that instead of finding the nearest emergency exit, occupants might travel to the entrance they have used previously. Their use of a fire exit might also be influenced by the visibility of it; how easy it is to understand (for example, in some parts of the world the fire exit signs are red whereas in Europe, we typically use green); and how easy it is to use (for example, an older person is less likely to use an escape that involves descending a ladder). This means that we cannot assume occupants will always use the closest exit. If too many people are using an exit, a queue could start forming and depending on how patient an individual is, they might decide to find another means of egress.

There is no guarantee that one evacuee will behave in the same way as another in an evacuation scenario. Their situational awareness or their interpretation of information could be different and they could decide to take different courses of action. This is why, even with top-of-the-range software to model evacuation, giving a definitive answer on how long it will take to evacuate a certain building is impossible. There are too many uncertainties involved. However, they can give an estimate and adding a safety margin to the RSET should mean that even with these uncertainties, the design will be safe.

Snowfall, at last!

Last year on this day (14 January), I arrived in Lund to start my second semester. I heard from others and read some blogs about how many of the IMFSE students, who come from the countries near the tropics like me, experienced their first snow during their studies in Lund University. So, obviously, I had great hopes for that. Unfortunately, it didn’t snow at all during my stay in the city, or at least I didn’t see any! With all the classes, I couldn’t even manage a trip to the north of Sweden. So, I also lost my chance to see the northern lights. And when it was the perfect time to travel around, the pandemic restricted every such opportunity!

Though I couldn’t experience snowfall in Lund, I was able to see Sweden in both spring and summer. That was definitely an enjoyable time for me. But, I was still waiting for the snow and people around me definitely knew how much I blabbered about this thing! I was hoping for the magical moment in 2021, as I will be in Lund for fourth semester too. However, never did I imagine that I will be able to see snowfall in Belgium, before going to Lund this year, and not even in Ghent but in Dinant where I went for a day trip last week. It was a light snowfall and didn’t last long, but still was enough to make me excited.

And now today, there was snowfall in Ghent, and more than what I saw in Dinant. Snowflakes are visible in none of the pictures I took in Ghent or in Dinant, so can’t add any in this blog. Still, I am happy to have seen it in Ghent, where it doesn’t snow normally.

Next thing I want is definitely to see snow piled up making everything around white. Hopefully I will be able to experience that in my last semester in IMFSE.

P.S. after two days of writing this, Ghent turned white 🙂

• 

•