Universities sound alarm over dangers of distance learning

French university teachers and directors have expressed concern over growing signs of psychological damage among their students, following the return to distance learning under the second COVID-19 lockdown, writes Isabelle Martinetti for RFI.

Julie Groffe-Charrier is a lecturer in private law at the University Paris-Saclay in the south of the French capital where she normally teaches in lecture theatres to around 300 first-year students. She told RFI: “It’s not so much the teachers – it’s mainly the students that we’re worried about.” She and her colleagues have been receiving messages from many students who report a very precarious and isolated situation. Since September, she has received more than 30 emails, “not to mention the students who don’t dare to express themselves”.

“We might think that these students are all millennials so they live permanently on the internet – but that is false. There is a real digital divide … Some students have difficulty sending in their work because their network is bad. I also have students who have not been able to pay their internet bill because they have no money.”
Full report on the RFI site