“We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today,” Martin Luther King Jr said in his famous speech at the Riverside Church in New York City in 1967. He was speaking at a time of great social and political upheaval in the United States. We are in a similar time, grappling with similar questions, but also new ones. As an institution, UWI has had to adapt to this new world very quickly.
COVID-19 has brought the future to our doorstep. The rapid transition The UWI has made in delivery of online classes and remote work, speaks to a level of agility that is in keeping with our Triple A Strategic Plan. I can also speak of the work groups at the St Augustine and other campuses that are currently ensuring operations and efficiency are maintained at any cost, despite the distance we have been forced to maintain. In terms of online assessments and assistance for students, we continue to provide communiqués that will guide them through new processes, as well as key resources such as our Regulations Guide for Assessments Done in Virtual Mode.
Of course none of these changes could be possible without the support of UWI St Augustine’s staff. They ramped up their online delivery training to facilitate a jump from a 34 per cent course delivery to over 94 per cent within a very short period of time. Our students have had to be patient with us through this change and we have been very grateful for their understanding of our efforts.
We are well aware that the pandemic still poses a real threat to all, and as such we have placed top priority on the safety of our students and staff. For our students, we’ll be offering teaching in what we refer to as a “hybrid mode”. This means that the programmes that can be delivered online will be sustained virtually, while the courses or modules that cannot, will be delivered in adherence to the safety guidelines put in place by the Government.
For those that need to attend laboratories for instance, we will ensure students are properly spaced, the laboratories are cleaned after use and so forth. The same will apply to our staff. Hand washing stations, as well as sanitisers, will be very present at our campus, and masks are to be worn at all times. Provisions will also be made for those students who lack the means to access learning resources while off campus. This includes the loaning of tablets or PCs and limited reserved seating in on-site delivery.
Even though this crisis has had negative effects on this institution and higher education in general, it has served as a catalyst for a much talked about digital transformation and its potential for realising efficiencies in our various primary and secondary business processes. This is long overdue, but, happily, we have already been developing strategies for this transformation.
COVID-19 has opened up this opportunity by catalysing UWI’s digital transformation. Apart from service delivery to our campus community, it is key to achieving our goal of expanding into the global education market. To meet this new challenge, we will need to upgrade our ICT facilities to provide the level of reliability and speed that the international market expects. Further, ensuring quality delivery to this expanded market necessitates more than technology, but also appropriately crafted and pedagogically sound modules specifically designed for online delivery. These modules must be complemented by strong and effective academic and administrative support systems.
COVID-19 has brought the future to our doorstep. I can say that the rapid transition The UWI has made in delivery of online classes and remote work, speaks to a level of agility that is in keeping with our Triple A Strategic Plan.
Indeed, if done well, online or blended teaching can be more effective than the traditional face- to-face method. The best example I have seen is where lectures are delivered in an asynchronous way by the educator posting a prerecorded lecture online which the student can access at almost any time, and as often as they like. Students can replay sections to view material as needed. This would be almost impossible in a typical classroom setting. Scheduled sessions, whether online or face-to-face, are reserved for class discussions on the lecture topic. This is clearly a much richer engagement than what would have obtained in the “old days” and the studies I have seen demonstrate that this technique has resulted in a definite improvement in class performance.
Undoubtedly, there is a need for our local education system to better utilise the technology. COVID-19 has forced institutions out of their comfort zones and made us reconsider the way in which we interact with our students. In mid-February, I was informed that the Chinese government directed approximately a quarter of a billion full-time students to resume their studies through online platforms, while another university placed more than 5,000 courses online in just two weeks. I think what is happening globally is an example of what must happen in our region in relatively short order.
As a precursor to this COVID-induced, region- wide digital transformation, we must seize the opportunity to rethink and re-engineer our entire national education systems. It would be a pity if we lost the opportunity to engage in this long overdue overhaul of what are essentially variations of systems that were designed for another purpose. This, however, is a discussion for another issue.
PROFESSOR BRIAN COPELAND
Campus Principal
