Students at the University of the West Indies (UWI) Mona campus may be waiting in vain for a resumption of face-to-face learning after the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, as the institution has hinted in it may never return to what it once was.

Professor Dale Webber, principal of the UWI’s Mona campus, noted that
even as nearly half of all students wait for the return to face-to-face classes, a mere 15 per cent of respondents surveyed preferred online tutoring.

Just over a third of UWI students surveyed, however, found favour with a blended option.

“What do we see happening for next year? We think we’re going to do blended learning. I don’t think we’ll ever go back to a campus of completely face-to-face [learning]. There are some students, who from now on will take their content where they want, when they want—blended learning is the future,” Webber stated during his presentation at the 2021 Mona Campus Council Meeting.

At the start of Jamaica’s response to the pandemic in March 2020, UWI closed its Mona campus for three weeks to allow the institution time to shift to a mostly digital learning platform for students as well as work from home arrangement for its staff.

The shift in education delivery comes for UWI Mona despite the initial setback posed by COVID-19 in 2020, which has now seen student enrolment has rebounded higher than expected.

“Our enrolment in 2019/20 was 19,100 at the start of the [academic] year and it grew by the end of the year 19,877 and there are fluctuations semester to semester. We however found that in 2020/21, while expecting a 15-20 per cent reduction, it was not evidenced,” he explained.

“Numbers as they stand now, are 18,838 demonstrated across faculties. Most faculties have a small decline in their resignations [but] we’re grateful that access has been maintained and students have seen this as the time for them to engage,” Webber said, adding that 76 per cent were full-time students and 24 being part-time.

Undergraduate numbers have dropped by two per cent while graduate enrolment has increased by four per cent. UWI has, however, seen a 15 per cent falloff in semester two registration which the institution anticipated as students bemoan financial difficulty and other online learning-related issues.