All teaching in the School of Languages, Literatures and Cultural Studies will move online until at least the week ending November 13th.
In an email to students, Tracy Corbett, a communications officer in the School, said that the School would be “closely monitoring all public health advice to determine whether we will deliver face to face teaching after the 13th November, or whether we will continue to deliver online teaching”.
Last week, College announced in an email to students that classes in the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, apart from those which must be delivered in person, will move online until level three restrictions are lifted.
The level-three restrictions, announced by the government last week, are set to be in place until October 10th.
Regarding Arts, Humanities and Social Science courses, Trinity added in the email that “it is important to say that not all teaching will move online because some of it may be deemed to be essential for in-person delivery by the academics involved in teaching the course, or by accrediting bodies.”
“Furthermore the timetables will not change because teaching will just switch from in-person to online.”
News of increased restrictions for Dublin-based universities and colleges came days after Senior Lecturer Kevin Mitchell confirmed to this newspaper that College planned to offer all students some in-person teaching this semester.
Earlier today, the Irish Universities Association (IUA) announced that on-campus teaching would be minimised and “given to teaching and learning that can only take place on-site” in Dublin’s universities.
In-person teaching for Health Science, Engineering, Mathematics and Science students will continue as planned, “either because it is laboratory, practical or other teaching requiring physical presence or because it is required for professional accreditation”, Trinity told students last week.
The level three restrictions have forced Dublin universities to reconfigure their approach to teaching, after having focused on ensuring that students would receive some online learning.
Speaking to The University Times last week regarding the IUA’s decision to move as many classes online as possible, Lorna Fitzpatrick, the president of the Union of Students in Ireland, said that “colleges, because they’re autonomous bodies, because each one of them is different in terms of size and in terms of courses, they need to make decisions and they need to make them quickly”.
“But I think the thing that needs to be at the forefront of everyone’s mind is student safety and while students most definitely want to be back on campus, they want to be back on a safe campus”, she added.
Trinity’s teaching term is due to commence on September 28th, with second, third and fourth years scheduled to begin classes that week. Freshers’ week is set to take place on September 28th also.
