The University of Guyana will be continuing its classes online for the first semester of academic year 2020- 21 starting from October 5, 2020. The University is happy that it managed to deliver upwards of 80% of its courses online during the first safe mode period (March to July).

Though it lost 473 of its 8700 students during this period, every effort is being made during this new year to better support the delivery and capacity of lecturers and to bring back those students who had to withdraw for various reasons . These reasons included access to internet, access to computers or suitable phones, difficult personal circumstances, inability to adapt and power instability in some areas. Over the next 3 years as UG develops its online and blended capacity the University could spend around US$3 million to put protective measures in place and convert to a top of the line blended mode. While this process has been fast tracked to begin this year, it will be rolled out over a few years.

Internationally, during the Covid 19 pandemic over 33% of global universities have been unable to deliver and have been forced to close. It is projected that 50% of Universities which closed may close permanently. It should be noted that UG never closed but moved online almost immediately.

For those Universities that remained open scrambling to respond to the pandemic by getting online, attrition rates (withdrawals and dropouts) average from 8 to 23% globally. Compared to this UG’s rate was 5.5%.

While the University acknowledges, as most University’s worldwide have done, that the move online was far from perfect, the fact that the University of Guyana was able to move from 100 courses online in Dec 2019 to 900 by July 2020 and to deliver these successfully to over 8000 students, including adapting assessments and University’s polices at the same time was a test of resilience, determination, creativity and dedication of the staff and students at the University. UG refused to give up in the face of grave adversity produced by two difficult coinciding situations in Guyana but delivered in the best way it could.

The Vice Chancellor has outlined and underscored the administrations gratitude to staff, students and collaborating partners and re-stated the University’s commitment to supporting educated and exemplary citizen students for Guyana. The University is doing everything reasonably possible in the present context to significantly improve its online systems in the coming semester.