A Change Of Environment Can Help

Hi there. It has been a while since I have done an education post. In this post I cover how a change of environment for a student can be beneficial for learning and even quality of life.

Motivation Behind This Post

The idea behind this post was based from my work. One of the students I worked with online is slowed down because of loud siblings in the house and her taking time to type answers. I suggested to my boss at the time that I thought it would be better for her to move to in-centre for her work. It has been a month now and I have heard that she is much faster in-center even though there are other young customers in the learning centre. A change of setting can bring the best in certain students.

A few years ago there was an opposite case where a student who did not do well in-centre did better when she moved to online. As the online learning sessions were semi private where there are no other students to bother her, this student did better online. What I mean by better was she was learning at a faster pace and was doing the exercises at a faster rate.

Change Of Setting

Change can be scary for some but there are times when change is beneficial. For a young student a change of learning environment such as from kid's room to dining room can be beneficial. A young kid may not be tempted to be playing video games or be distracted by social media. This young person in theory would be more focused in a dining room area where there is parental supervision. An opposite case can be helpful too. This is where instead of a loud dining room area, the young student can focus better in their rooms in isolation.

Changes can be implemented for older students such as college and university students. Instead of studying in the same spot in the same library one could go to different spots in the same library or go to different spots in different libraries. Learning and studying can be a bit more interesting in different areas. A somewhat more extreme case would be studying while on vacation or travelling.

Changing Teachers / Courses

There are times when staying on a certain path is not good for you. You could be doing something that you don't enjoy and want to do something else in terms of educational goals, degree options, hobbies, courses or even careers. A student may want to change teachers as the current teacher is not helpful or has a bad personality. Changing teachers could be beneficial and provide some peace of mind. A course change from one tough course to a less demanding course could be good to reduce student courseload and stress.

There is risk when it comes to changing teachers and courses. One could make a change from one teacher to an even worse teacher. The same applies to courses. In theory you could go from a bad situation to an even worse situation. Typically it is likely that a situation gets better when you leave a bad teacher/course/situation.