New Deputy Principal of the UWI Open Campus, Dr. Francis Severin.
UWI Open Campus Marketing and Communications Manager, Dr. Cleveland Sam.
WHILE many institutions and organisations were thrown into turmoil with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, The University of the West Indies Open Campus was in a perfect position to accommodate all of its students online, while at the same time helping other institutions to quickly transition into a virtual learning environment.
New Deputy Principal, Dr. Francis Severin and Marketing and Communications Manager, Dr. Cleveland Sam, recently highlighted the collaborative steps taken to navigate the pandemic, while ensuring that the approximately 5 000 students of the institution did not skip a beat in the 16 territories in which the Open Campus operates. They noted that the institution, which focuses primarily on distance education, was poised to transition smoothly, even though the scale and impact of the pandemic could never have been predicted.
Dr. Sam told The Barbados Advocate that the campus was expecting to see a significant fall-off in the student roll as a result of COVID, bearing in mind the age range of students is normally between the ages of 25-54. “So these are the people who were working, who had been laid off or had reduced hours. But we were pleasantly surprised to see that our numbers did not fall-off significantly compared to the period in 2019.”
In fact, it was revealed that in 2020, the campus reached approximately 95 per cent of the student intake over 2019 and still surpassed the number of students that were enrolled in 2017 and 2018.
He stated that while there were some face-to-face classes in the 16 territories when the pandemic hit, within one week the campus was able to transition those students from face-to-face to online.
“In addition to that, our staff were able to assist ministries of education, community colleges, sister university lecturers to transition their courses online. But obviously they had to pause. So some students in other parts of the region would have missed two and three weeks before they started. It did not affect the Open Campus students in the same way that it affected students from the other universities,” he reiterated.
It was explained that the Continuing Professional Education Centre has been doing a good job creating short programmes, recognising that in the COVID period, many persons will have less disposable income and may not necessarily want to study for three or five years, rather would look at a three-month or six-month programme.
The Open Campus officials also revealed that the tertiary institution can also custom-make programmes across the region for companies and even government departments. “If you say we have 59 persons who would like to be trained in programme ‘X’ or ‘Y’. We don’t want them to spend three months off work. We can go to our Programme Delivery Department and ask – ‘Can you repackage this into a one-week programme, so that we can offer this to a company in Cayman or a government department in Trinidad?’” he explained.
Dr. Severin commended the Academic Programming and Delivery Division, under Dr. Denise Gaspard-Richards, which has been at the forefront of the kind of agility that allowed the campus to respond quickly to COVID-19.
Dr. Severin noted that in addition to catering to the educational needs, the Open Campus was also mindful of the psychological needs that would have arisen and as a result, there were a number of ‘caring’ interventions implemented confidentially. “We have a department that is called ‘Consortium for Social Development and Research’ and what they did, they implemented online counselling immediately for our students and staff.”
Additionally, the campus partnered with the students’ guild and hosted a forum on UWI TV. “So that the Guild and other students can express themselves and talk about their fears and what was good ... what was bad, what was ugly and how they are trying to resolve those issues. We were able to create out of this an extravagant marketing campaign, and I refer to our first ever virtual recruitment fair. So we actually hosted two virtual recruitment fairs in June and I think those fairs really showed what the Open Campus is made of.”
He noted that aggressive marketing and by offering an attractive discount was critical in keeping numbers up in the school year.
Dr. Severin also singled out the level of mutual respect between the leadership of the Open Campus and the Guild of Students as one of the reasons for the institution’s success during the COVID period. (JH)