UG crisis team working overtime
What’s going to happen to the exam week?
On Sunday evening, the UG locked all university buildings in an effort to curtail the spread of the coronavirus. This measure follows the decision, three days ago, to cancel all physical classes and meetings.
The lockdown will last until at least April 10 and will impact the exam period, which starts on March 23. Are the exams still on? If they are, how will they be administered? What about potential study delays people might suffer?
‘Those are exactly the kind of questions we’re currently trying to answer’, says UG spokesperson Jorien Bakker. She hopes to be able to say more later in the week.
Online classes
The impact on the exams might not be quite clear, but lecturers are ready to start teaching online classes. On Monday morning, approximately 150 lecturers watched the webinar that had been set up over the weekend, instructing them how to teach online.
The lecturer session is available every day at 10 a.m. on MyUniversity. The UG website also has more information about how to teach online classes.
That the digital switch is a success can also be read on Twitter. Professor of health law Brigit Toebes posted that while the first class, consisting of eighty students, wasn’t perfect, it was a success, nonetheless.
Lost time
Pieter Duisenberg, president of the Association of Universities in the Netherlands (VSNU), had said during an NPO Radio 1 broadcast that there is a chance that students might suffer study delays. He said it’s possible that students will have to make up for lost time in the summer.
While this is unusual, it’s not actually the first time this has happened. After the end of the Second World War, students had to study during the summer to make up for the delay they’d suffered during the last year of the war. While the UG didn’t close down then, all activities had ceased.