UI adopts virtual classes amid COVID-19 surge

The management of the University of Ibadan (UI) says it would combine virtual classes with physical lectures for the remainder of the ongoing second semester of the 2020/2021 academic session.

In a statement on Monday, Olubunmi Faluyi, the insitution’s registrar, said the measure became imperative to reduce physical gathering on campus and its college hospital amid the rising COVID-19 cases in the country.

The varsity also decried the lack of total compliance with COVID-19 protocol among some people on the campus.

It added that with the new arrangement, each faculty in the institution is expected to list courses that are to be taught online and those to be taken physically.

“This is to inform the university community that management has requested the faculties to identify the courses to be taught online and those to be taught physically en route to the commencement of the blended mode of teaching and learning for the remaining part of the second semester of the 2020/2021 session,” it read.

“The Emergency Remote Teaching Committee (ERTC), in its proposal to the Committee of Provosts and Deans (CoPD), in a meeting, held on the 11th August, 2021, had noted and recommended as follows:

“More cases of COVID-19 are being announced nationwide. These call for caution and proactive actions which should take into consideration, in the main, the review of the mode of teaching and learning in the second semester and, as a consequence, provide a safe way to undertake pedagogical activities on Nigerian university campuses;

“With the daily rising cases of the Delta variant of COVID-19, and with several cases within the main and the College of Medicine/UCH campuses, the ERTC considered a proposal of blended teaching for the second-semester lectures in the university.

“The blended learning model should be officially decided in terms either of availability of sections of the student population for online or physical encounters or the categorization of courses as online or physical which neutralises choice of location or keeps all students, in principle, in physical presence within and/or around the campus;

“The ERTC platforms and tools (LMS, zoom, youtube, gsuite accounts, telegram fora, solution clinics) should be maintained for use by students and staff in all cases;

“Google meet which is practically free should, in addition, be encouraged for lectures since all academics have access to Gmail accounts.”

A total of 182,503 coronavirus cases have been confirmed in Nigeria so far.