107,000 UEW students to graduate after taking part in virtual lectures, exams

The University of Education, Winneba (UEW) says a total of 107,000 students and staff have successfully used the school’s online learning platform to complete academic work and will soon graduate.

The Learning Management System was introduced by the university as a stop-gap measure to carry out academic work in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The system has also helped reduce the spread of the virus on campus since it reduced face to face interaction.

Speaking to Citi News, Pro-Vice-Chancellor of the university, Professor Andy Ofori Birikorang indicated that despite the challenges in the initial stages of the system, it has been successful.

“Around March 17, 2020, we had indicated that UEW already had an online platform for running a hybrid of teaching and learning with some on the online model platform. But only 54,000 users including staff were on the platform. Our challenge was to enrol as many as 85,000 students onto the learning management system and by the end of April, we had 107,000 users on the platform. We had about 600 courses at the beginning of the pandemic situation and currently, we have loaded over 2,000 courses,” he said.

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According to the PRO Vice-Chancellor, although the initial stages of the online platforms had challenges the university has successfully used to system to carry out academic work.

“We decided to test the resilience of the system in April by organizing mandatory quizzes for all students but because of the challenges, there was the backlash from the general public but we waded on. We encouraged our lecturers to put some human face in all the activities on the platform because the pandemic had brought a lot of challenges and they did just that,” he added.

Professor Ofori Birikorang noted that the university is currently going through the post semester processes of organizing supplementary examination and resit so by the middle of August final year students of the school can be able to graduate.

“This has exceeded our expectations and I think it has exceeded the expectation of some Ghanaians who thought the system will not work. We have not even ended but all our final year students have utilized the system to submit their end of system papers and project work and will graduate in August. We are planning for virtual graduation,” Professor Birikorang said.

The Management of the University says the sandwich students will also be enrolled onto the platform as a result of the success of the program.

“Because of the new normal, the university management has decided that the learning management system will be part of the school,” Professor Birikorang said.

“We are optimistic that 30% of all teaching and learning activities in the regular form will be done online and 70% will be in person as a result of the success of the system,” he added.