124 National Scholarship winners, just over 50% of the 236 scholarships awarded by the Government of Trinidad and Tobago, have registered as first year students at the St. Augustine Campus, University of the West Indies. This group includes six students who have top of the world scores in particular subjects as well as high performers in a range of subjects in both A’ levels and CAPE examinations.
The incoming freshmen class of this year was 3,768. In addition 1,134 new graduate students also registered. Compared to last year the increase was 123 for new undergraduate enrolment and 44 for graduate.
The Evening University also seems to be catching on. 265 new students registered this year for evening programmes bringing the Evening total to 484 and 175 also registered for distance learning programmes bringing the Distance total to 480. The total number of students registered at St. Augustine now in all categories is 13,441. “This large number (the largest ever) presents a major challenge for infrastructure, support service, classrooms, labs, auditorium space and housing for students.” said Campus Principal Dr. Bhoendradatt Tewarie in an interview with UWItoday. “It also places a tremendous burden on existing human resources. Increased class size, unless effectively managed, can have a negative impact on the quality and that is why the quality issues at UWI have become top priority in the 2005/2006 academic year.”
Close attention is being paid to the teaching and learning strategies for large classes, including breaking up into small tutorial groups, repeat classes, deployment of technology, and mid-term review of courses in consultation with student representatives to ensure that students are receiving the value that they expect in the classroom.
“This year the St. Augustine Campus will be engaged in a number of construction projects having to do mostly with classrooms, labs and student housing.” the campus Principal emphasized. “In addition the Campus is moving steadfastly to dual mode delivery of programmes. Currently 96 courses are fully developed for delivery on WebCT and are available online. In addition another 50 are under development and will soon be available to students. We continue to press on in this direction.” New technologies are also being explored which will allow students to have 24 hour access to all material taught in the classroom in the form of a video file.
Moreover discussion with the Ministry of Tertiary Education leading up to the annual round of University/ Government meeting (Technical Advisory and University Grants Committees) will focus heavily on human resource strengthening as well as capital projects funding for student housing, classroom and lab space and other infrastructure to support quality. |
