Student A, living in Pohang, Kyeongbuk, expressed the helplessness, saying, "I have to search for a place to live because of the sudden transition to face-to-face classes from online classes." Student A had only enrolled in the classes with no possibility to change from online to offline courses. Still, suddenly the announcement of doing "flareup" face-to-face classes was posted when the semester was less than two months away. Student A said, "I registered for courses to prevent the incident of class turning to face-to-face in the middle of the semester. Now that classes that should be progressed online are changing to face-to-face classes without asking any opinion, I don't know what to do."

Students' complaints are bursting out as some courses continuously change non-face-to-face classes to full face-to-face classes without asking for opinions or prior notice. Some students complain about quitting part-time jobs that they got hard because of sudden conversion to face-to-face classes. University Administration was in the position of “We already noticed to collect students’ opinions.” However, it is pointed out that there should be a plan to solve the inconvenience of students. 

According to University Administration, PNU introduced a new Educational Management System that changes existing mixed classes to face-to-face classes from May 1st. It follows the Ministry of Education's announcement of the "Progression scheme on back to normal campus after Omicron" on April 20th. After gathering students' opinions, our school must convert remote classes (including remote classes in mixed classes) to face-to-face. If there are students who are inevitably forced to take non-face-to-face classes due to unavoidable reasons such as long-distance commute to school and health issues, they can choose to attend in either forms. Jeong Hye-Ri, the action officer of the Ministry of Education's Lecture Team, said, "We announced to change the class type only for lectures that have been completed to reflect students' opinions. 

The problem is that these guidelines are not being appropriately followed. On April 29th, a post on the online community of our university, "Every Time," said that "I am embarrassed about the university announcing the face-to-face classes without any polls or collecting opinions." Many responded that they were confused, such as "I cannot eat a meal if this class changes to a face-to-face class," or "I signed up only for remote classes because it takes three hours to go to school."

Even classes that were notified to be "remote" at first and had no room to change to face-to-face classes were also included in the convert list. According to the course catalog on Student Support System, a class form of "remote" is progressing the class 100% in remote, except for exams such as midterm and final. However, students taking a course are having trouble as part of remote classes are notifying "convert to face-to-face class" unilaterally. Student B said, "The schedule has been twisted by the professor's unilateral face-to-face conversion notice. I have to quit my part-time job if it happens." A series of posts expressed complaints and dissatisfaction with the issue on "Everytime."

The Emergency Measures Committee of the General Students' Association said "There is no measure yet being discussed. We plan to handle the issue as the Education Policy Bureau monitors the classes to see if it has any complaints about it."

Reporter Im Ha-Eun

Translated by Lee Su-Hyun