The Tools That Became Crucial for Students During the Pandemic Are Here to Stay
By: Rylee Holwager, Tiana Sandberg, Mariana Montoya, Praditya Fulumairani, and Lesile Valle
When Kaitlyn Ha’s, a senior at California State University, Northridge (CSUN), classes shifted online due to the COVID-19 pandemic, she started utilizing GroupMe and Discord frequently. She quickly began to realize that even though everything was virtual, these apps allowed her to create meaningful connections and friendships with her peers.
Being the first generation to grow up with cellphones and technology, teachers and professors forbade the use of cellphones during class time because it was seen as a distraction. With school changing into an online format, suddenly cellphones became an essential tool to navigate their online classroom. Students used their phones as a way to keep track of their classes, Zoom meetings, as well as using different apps, which were found helpful to stay connected with their peers.
While college students adapted to the virtual learning environment, apps such as Discord and GroupMe played a major role in keeping students engaged in their classes as well as connecting with their peers. GroupMe class group chats made it easy for students to be on top of their work, while Discord offered a way for one-on-one conversations and created a new kind of community online. As schools slowly return to in-person learning, the usage of Discord and GroupMe will continue playing a vital role within the communication students have with their classmates.
In our research, we created a crowdsourcing survey in which we received 45 responses from CSUN variety of students from different backgrounds. Based on the responses, it could be surmised that the use of GroupMe and Discord became a large part of virtual learning for students and it’s here to stay post-COVID. With 68% of our responses stating they began using GroupMe during the pandemic, and 53% of them started using Discord, the impact these apps had on college students during the last year is indisputable.
CSUN students aren’t the only ones benefiting from GroupMe, the widespread usage of the app is a coast-to-coast phenomenon. A study at the University of Michigan found that 33% of students considered GroupMe “slightly or moderately useful” while about 16% of them found the app “very useful.” On the other hand, Discord, a website once used for gamers, reached 140 million users in 2020, double the amount of its 2019 users, and a part of this can be attributed to its growing popularity among students, especially in educational settings. Communication apps have changed the way peers can connect even now as in-person classes resume. As part of our crowdsourcing project, being able to hear student’s opinions towards online learning is something we made sure was going to be amplified. In our end result, we found that their responses reflected how these apps allowed them to build learning communities, aid in forming study groups, easily enable them to reach out to other
As part of our study, we gathered a few different perspectives from CSUN students to understand exactly how these apps influenced communication in their classes.
For Communications major Emily Berryhill, these apps have been integral during her time at CSUN. “I feel that the pandemic was already isolating as is, so the communication apps kept me grounded. I really feel that compared to pre-COVID times, I never communicated as much with my classmates as I do now,” Berryhill said. Discord and GroupMe specifically were useful to her this past semester since they made communication significantly easier, especially when compared to trying to reach peers through email or Canvas. Another app she came across in virtual learning is called VoiceThread, in which a professor for one of her classes assigned all of their work on that particular app where students had to record their responses and reply to others. “I have never seen a professor use this type of communication app before,” Berryhill said. “Personally, I enjoyed doing this because it was more conversational.”
As a second-semester senior in Entertainment Media Management, Caroline Spence has been in college for a while now. “I wasn’t expecting a worldwide pandemic to hit as I entered my last years at CSUN. It scared me to think I’d lose the face-to-face connections and graduate into a world with no solid friendships,” Spence said. “With Discord, I was able to easily talk with my peers and even play fun Jackbox games. Now that there are more in-person classes, the connections I made online proved to be solid and it has been great to connect with so many of my peers.”
As online school became the new normal, freshmen became seniors seemingly in a blink of an eye, their college years slipping away as they sat on their parents’ couches.“Throughout the pandemic, I have been able to use GroupMe and Discord for my courses and overall, it has been extremely helpful for me to stay connected to other students and the campus,” Natalie DeSousa said, who had to move back to Santa Clara because of COVID-19. “I have made friends from these group chats who have helped me in my absences during the semester. I plan to continue to reach out to classmates and work collaboratively in the classroom and virtually follow the return to in-person classes.”
With the pandemic’s end seen in the near future and most classes returning to campus, there is no doubt that apps like GroupMe and Discord are here to stay for supplemental learning.
