En­sur­ing the ful­filled needs of ter­tiary-lev­el stu­dents dur­ing the Covid-19 lock­down pe­ri­od is an in­ter­est­ing en­deav­our and chal­lenge, to say the least. I am par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cerned with their on­line and In­ter­net needs.

Ob­vi­ous­ly, there are those who do not have wire­less or In­ter­net ac­cess at home.

A num­ber of stu­dents might be us­ing da­ta on their smart­phones in or­der to ac­cess on­line class ses­sions, course ma­te­r­i­al, email an­nounce­ments, up­dates, and as­sign­ment guide­lines.

How­ev­er, not every ter­tiary-lev­el stu­dent owns a smart­phone or is even in a fi­nan­cial po­si­tion to af­ford one. And, for some, the spe­cif­ic dis­tance learn­ing plat­form be­ing used, may not be ful­ly com­pat­i­ble with cer­tain types of smart­phones or de­vices.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the na­ture of the re­quired course as­sign­ments, may war­rant writ­ten doc­u­ments with sig­nif­i­cant amounts of words; and the use of small mo­bile phones to com­plete these projects, may be a bit ar­du­ous.

This ob­vi­ous­ly would be less of an is­sue for stu­dents who have ac­cess to desk­top com­put­ers, lap­tops, iPads, or tablets at home. But some stu­dents may al­so be pre­sent­ed with a chal­lenge here too; es­pe­cial­ly when two or more mem­bers of the house­hold re­quire the use of the same de­vice, around the same time.

Pri­or to the coro­n­avirus-ini­ti­at­ed lock­down, in­ter­net-chal­lenged stu­dents would have been pri­mar­i­ly mak­ing use of on-cam­pus com­put­er labs through­out the day, in or­der to com­plete their re­quired writ­ten as­sign­ments. Oth­ers prob­a­bly al­so took ad­van­tage of the ser­vices of in­ter­net cafes out­side of on-cam­pus lab hours.

Some may even have been ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a few hours of hos­pi­tal­i­ty, gen­eros­i­ty, or ac­com­mo­da­tion from rel­a­tives, friends, and neigh­bours, who will­ing­ly (or even un­will­ing­ly in some cas­es) fa­cil­i­tat­ed their pres­ence at their homes, in or­der to use com­put­er and as­so­ci­at­ed tech­no­log­i­cal gad­gets, de­vices, and fa­cil­i­ties, for com­ple­tion of as­sign­ments and projects in a time­ly man­ner.

How­ev­er, in the cur­rent COVID-19 sit­u­a­tion, schools and uni­ver­si­ty cam­pus­es are closed; there is a na­tion­al Stay-at-Home or­der; there is an on­go­ing “on­ly es­sen­tial ser­vices” stip­u­la­tion; there is a so­cial or phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing man­date; there is al­so a five-per­sons-on­ly and no con­gre­gat­ing re­quire­ment; and un­der­stand­ably so, there is a per­vad­ing fear of con­tract­ing the virus by be­ing in con­tact with any ran­dom per­son, place, prod­uct, pet, piece, or par­ti­cle.

So how can the in­her­ent chal­lenges for in­ter­net-dis­placed stu­dents be ad­dressed? Can they leave home to go and ful­fil their aca­d­e­m­ic as­sign­ments?

Are in­ter­net cafés es­sen­tial ser­vices that are opened and avail­able through­out most of the day or night?

Do stu­dents feel safe enough to go to homes out­side of their own, not know­ing whether any of the oc­cu­pants are Covid-19 pos­i­tive or not?

Are rel­a­tives, neigh­bours, and friends com­fort­able with hav­ing a stu­dent over to their homes not know­ing whether the stu­dent is an asymp­to­matic car­ri­er?

Fur­ther­more, are in­ter­net ser­vice providers (ISPs) and vir­tu­al pri­vate net­works (VP­Ns), along with as­so­ci­at­ed tele­phone com­pa­nies, of­fer­ing con­sis­tent, sus­tained, un­in­ter­rupt­ed, and vi­able ac­cess and trans­mis­sion ser­vice to fa­cil­i­tate the needs of stu­dents in all ar­eas of the coun­try, in­clud­ing rur­al or re­mote dis­tricts?

What about the T&T Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC), and so­lar elec­tric­i­ty providers: Can stu­dents (and teach­ers) who live in par­tic­u­lar dis­tricts, be as­sured of no pow­er out­ages or black­outs, which tend to af­fect In­ter­net con­nec­tiv­i­ty for many?

If this cur­rent dis­pen­sa­tion of on­line teach­ing and dis­tance learn­ing will, as is be­ing sug­gest­ed, be­come the new nor­mal across the board; then for the ben­e­fit of both stu­dents and teach­ers, var­i­ous sys­tems of ef­fi­cien­cy and ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty will need to be ex­plored and as­sured; and the as­so­ci­at­ed eco­nom­ic im­pli­ca­tions for in­di­vid­u­als and house­holds, will al­so need to be ad­dressed in a time­ly, rea­son­able, and fea­si­ble man­ner.

Maybe there are im­por­tant lessons to be learnt, from al­ready ex­ist­ing on­line schools and pro­grams across the globe.

Dr Pa­tri­cia Dyett,

Uni­ver­si­ty Lec­tur­er, Pub­lic Health Nu­tri­tion­ist, Reg­is­tered Di­etit­ian