NI students return to university next week amid the pandemic – but will uni life be the same?
Mandatory face coverings, social distancing and blended learning will be the new normal for university students.
Hundreds of university students across Northern Ireland are getting ready to start the new academic year next week. But will attending university during a global pandemic mean students are disadvantages by not having as much face-to-face teaching or getting to experience normal university life? Chelsie Kealey reports.
Anais Foy (18) is from Donegal and is due to start her second year at Queens University Belfast to study Pharmacy.
She said : “There’s no doubt that I won’t be getting the same university experience as normal due to the social distancing in college itself.”
QUB, like other teaching establishments across the country, has adopted a blended approach to teaching. Classes will be taught through a mixture of face-to-face lectures and online material.
Facilities on campus will be open for students from the start of term, including coffee shops and study areas, but social distancing and one-way systems will be in place ‘where appropriate’ and face masks are mandatory during teaching and in other areas where social distancing cannot be maintained.
Returning students will already be well used to using Zoom, Skype and online resources for their learning since this is the approach universities adopted when lockdown came into force in March this year, but Anais is worried this method of teaching will disadvantage her, she said:
“Unfortunately, that all won’t be happening this year and I think it will have a big impact on first years, as I know I made lots of friends during freshers week last year.”
“I’ve received a draft time table that shows lectures will be pre-recorded and placed online with labs taking place face-to-face, so it’s kind of like a half and half approach meaning that I will be in college around two half-days a week,“ she said
“I worry that I won’t get as much from the lectures and that I’ll find it a lot harder to concentrate sitting in my room in comparison to sitting in the lecture hall.
“I will still have to pay full fees which personally I do agree with, I will still come out with the same degree in the end, the lectures still have to do the same work and I’m confident they’ll help us as much as usual and the college itself is doing the best in can to facilitate normal learning conditions considering the current situation.”
In a statement QUB it said :The university will be providing as much face-to-face teaching as possible, within the context of social distancing but large lectures will be delivered online at the start of semester.
‘At Queen's University Belfast, the health and wellbeing of our students, staff and wider community is our first priority.”
Charlotte Weston (18) is from Middlesborough and she will be starting her first year at QUB next week to study Language and Linguistics. She said she’s ‘quite pleased’ she will get to attend some lectures in person because some university courses are being taught online for the full academic year, she said:
“My class is half and half learning, or blended learning as they call it.
“All my lectures are online obviously because that’s a lot of people in one room, your smaller seminars and your tutorials are going to be in-person because you can social distance and I’m quite pleased with that.
“I’m not massively worried about having the same university experience, obviously I think it’s something a lot of us would have liked but at the same time you kind of get why you’re not allowed to go in the nightclubs and stuff so we’ll just have to make do with what we’ve got.
“I won’t have the normal freshers experience, but you understand why you can’t have that.
“It would have been nice to do the freshers fair and have all the events and go out with your mates and stuff like you usually would, but Queens has just postponed the event, so when freshers can happen it will happen, so I feel like we’ve not missed out too much because they are going to have an event for us just when it’s safe to have it.”
For Anais Freshers Week was an important opportunity for her to make new friends and enjoy what university life had to offer, she said: “Freshers week definitely won’t be the same without the nightclubs.
“Freshers really is a chance to get dressed up and go out with your friends and an opportunity to meet new friends.
“All the night clubs and bars would have different promotional events on each night and just part of the usual going back to college ritual.
“Unfortunately, that all won’t be happening this year and I think it will have a big impact on first years, as I know I made lots of friends during freshers week last year.”
The Government has set a new indictive date for wet-led pubs to open on September 21 but not nightclubs. Establishment are set to open the same day semester one is due to commence, but with the date being pushed back previously it is unknown whether the Government will renege on their decision again.
The Economy Minister, Diane Dodds, has acknowledged that this year will be like no other in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic.
In a statement she said:
“I sympathise with ‘fresher’ students who are starting a higher-level education course this year and who perhaps feel that the experience they will receive is diminished in comparison with the experiences of freshers in previous years,” she said.
“Higher education institutions, as autonomous organisations, are fully responsible not only for the education and learning they provide students, but also for ensuring student safety, and it is of course right and appropriate that higher education institutions prioritise student health and safety.
“My Department has sought and received assurances that all of these institutions have developed their own guidelines for students and staff on the return of learning for the new academic year.
“I do, of course, appreciate the complexity of this task and the risks involved. My Department will continue to liaise with the higher education sector as the new academic year proceeds, and I am hopeful that the institutions can increase the number of students they can safely accommodate onsite as time progresses, and the wider context of the pandemic develops.”