Face-to-face teaching for computer science students in first, second and third year will be confined to three to four weeks per year group in the first semester.
Students will only be required on campus for a day and a half during their face-to-face weeks, and will be split into “pods”, which will be rotated into the computer labs to avoid different pods from mixing.
Lecturers and tutors will come to the lab for face-to-face teaching. This system will reduce the number of venues students need to visit, allow the school to avoid too many students congregating in spaces and assist with contact tracing.
In total, students from first to third year will receive the majority of teaching online, with one week of face-to-face learning per two weeks online learning.
In an email to students, the School of Computer Science said that “even with only one year attending campus at a time, we cannot accommodate every student in a year on campus on every day of the week”.
The School added that “for students who live in Ireland but outside Dublin, it is hoped that the above arrangement might allow you to commute to Dublin just for those days when you have scheduled face-to-face activities”.
The arrangements for fourth and fifth year students are different due to the number of electives made available to them.
Fourth and fifth years will be able to use a computer lab or other study space for one day per week in most weeks of the semester. Their schedules will depend on the combination of electives they take, and they will be assigned a space to work on assignments, engage with other students and receive face-to-face teaching.
The government this month announced that universities and colleges will be permitted to relax the two-metre social distancing rule to one metre when in lectures or classes.
In guidelines for higher-education institutions published earlier this month, the government said that while the two-metre rule should be maintained “under all circumstances possible”, there will be instances where “teaching cannot be delivered while maintaining 2m distance between students”.
“Under such circumstances”, the guidelines said, “the distance between student seats or workstations may be reduced to (but not less than) 1m”.
Staff are advised to wear face shields, visors or other protective equipment – provided by the universities – if the social distancing rule is relaxed.
