While most students slept in on the morning of the Thursday
snow day, the students in business professor Murray Levin’s class were in their
seats, or sitting in their beds, at 9:30. Levin decided to conduct his Legal
Aspects of the Management Process class online when KU closed campus because of
the weather. He ended up doing the same thing on Tuesday, as well. Levin is
teaching another class this semester, which is completely online, and said he
likes some of the advantages it provides, such as not worrying about the
weather.
“I immediately thought I could easily carry that over to my
other traditional classroom-based lecture,” Levin said, “and the downtime for
me and for my students could be turned into productive time.”
Accounting senior Abbey Estrada, like most of the students,
was surprised when she found out the classes weren’t cancelled. Even though
they were online, she said she didn’t feel like she missed out on anything because
of that.
“Although it was a little disappointing, I’m glad we were
able to stay on track,” Estrada said. “It was also better having class online
so I could stay in my pajamas.”
Staying on track meant taking the test as scheduled this
week and not cutting anything out of the lesson plans. Levin said he saw continuing
with the original schedule as an advantage to the students, who could possibly
be facing new and perhaps compacted schedules in other classes.
“I can understand not wanting to cut course content,” said
Michael Virgo, a graduate student in accounting. “A lot of people in the class
will eventually take the CPA exam and need to learn all of it.”
There were no major technical malfunctions and overall, the
students said they were just as ready for the exam as they would have been
without the snow days.
