An­na-Lisa Paul

It’s been two years since ed­u­ca­tion fa­cil­i­ties in­clud­ing ter­tiary in­sti­tu­tions in T&T closed their doors and tran­si­tioned to on­line class­es in a bid to keep the COVID-19 virus at bay.

While a phased re­sump­tion of in-per­son class­es at the sec­ondary and pri­ma­ry lev­els be­gan in the first and sec­ond terms re­spec­tive­ly, ter­tiary lev­el stu­dents are yet to re­turn to lec­ture halls full-time al­though they have been giv­en per­mis­sion to re­turn for prac­ti­cals and labs on­ly.

On Mon­day, Pro Vice-Chan­cel­lor of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus, Prof Bri­an Copeland told Guardian Me­dia, “We are tar­get­ing a full re­turn as of the new aca­d­e­m­ic year.”

Al­though plan­ning for that has not yet start­ed in earnest, he as­sured, “We will be pre­pared to re­tain the present arrange­ment if the sit­u­a­tion does not im­prove as we an­tic­i­pate.”

“In the mean­time, even as face-to-face teach­ing pro­ceeds on­line, we will con­tin­ue to of­fer prac­ti­cal phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ties such as labs and field trips in com­pli­ance with the COVID-19 pro­to­cols,” he said.

Copeland said just as cus­tomers have to line up out­side banks and gro­ceries, UWI al­so had to en­sure they abide by the ap­plic­a­ble pro­to­cols such as mask-wear­ing, hand wash­ing, and so­cial dis­tanc­ing.

Re­gard­ing the lat­ter in a class­room set­ting, he said, “Six-foot spac­ing be­tween stu­dents au­to­mat­i­cal­ly im­plies that class­room and au­di­to­ri­um oc­cu­pan­cy would now range from 16 per cent for au­di­to­ri­um spaces (as­sum­ing there is two-feet wide seat­ing), to 50 per cent max­i­mum for most small­er class­rooms.”

“In short, we do not have the class­room space to ac­com­mo­date all stu­dents while ob­serv­ing the so­cial dis­tanc­ing pro­to­col.”

He said com­pli­ance mech­a­nisms re­quired for com­mon ar­eas was al­so quite chal­leng­ing.

He said, “We are strate­gis­ing on se­cure­ly ground­ing our mode of de­liv­ery in a hy­brid en­vi­ron­ment where class­room de­liv­ery in­clud­ing class­es and tu­to­ri­als would be of­fered in an ef­fec­tive mix rang­ing from 100 per cent face-to-face, to 100 per cent on­line.”

Copeland added, “The ex­act mix is a ped­a­gog­i­cal de­ci­sion to be made by the lec­tur­er and de­part­ment and based on an ap­proved course out­line.”

Point­ing out one ben­e­fit of this strat­e­gy, he said, “We should be able to eas­i­ly piv­ot from one modal­i­ty to the oth­er in an ex­treme­ly short time from 100 per cent on­line if phys­i­cal ac­cess is im­pos­si­ble or even 100 per cent face-to-face if the na­tion­al ICT in­fra­struc­ture fails.”

This he said, would en­sure UWI had a much more ro­bust and re­silient plat­form for de­liv­ery in the face of any even­tu­al­i­ty.

Uni­ver­si­ty of TT (UTT) chair­man, Prof Clement Im­bert, said ter­tiary in­sti­tu­tions were able to eas­i­ly tran­si­tion to on­line when the pan­dem­ic be­gan.

“The ter­tiary stu­dents were ac­cus­tomed to do­ing things on­line be­fore as class­es were be­ing up­loaded and oth­er cer­tain things were be­ing al­so be­ing done in re­al-time,” Im­bert said.

Reg­is­tra­tion was list­ed among the pro­ce­dures that shift­ed to the on­line modal­i­ty, while project sub­mis­sions con­tin­ue both on­line and in per­son.

He said the on­line in­fra­struc­ture had been in place be­fore as he added, “It was not dif­fi­cult to go on­line with the teach­ing. Stu­dents were ac­cus­tomed to do­ing things on­line so they would have had to have ac­cess to a com­put­er…it was not too dif­fi­cult.”

Ad­mit­ting UTT class­rooms fea­tured seats that were very close, Im­bert said it would be dif­fi­cult to ac­com­mo­date large groups in keep­ing with pub­lic health reg­u­la­tions. Pressed to say if UTT was look­ing at Sep­tem­ber to re­sume phys­i­cal class­es full-time, Im­bert said these dis­cus­sions will need to take place with both the teach­ing fra­ter­ni­ty and stu­dent pop­u­la­tion.