Trinity is considering moving some staff into an off-campus hub, reducing the number of people working on campus and leading to the demolition or selling off of some of College’s existing buildings.
A confidential discussion paper – drafted by the Trinity Futures Group – seen by The University Times outlines what College could look like with the implementation of new technologies to enhance teaching and learning.
The paper was drafted by the Trinity Futures Group, consisting of some of the most senior people in College, and made a number of other suggestions about how changes brought about by the coronavirus could be made permanent.
Profits from the selling off of buildings could be reinvested into “refurbishment projects and/or creating the off-campus Hub”, the paper states.
Once vacated, campus buildings will be repurposed as “residential units, meeting room hubs or other space typologies”.
“Universities are generally poor users of space”, the document says. “Smart Working could improve effective use of the Trinity estate and prompt the transition from a traditional campus to a connected campus.”
Meanwhile the hub would also lessen the need for dedicated offices for staff engaged in hybrid working, a mixture between remote and in-person working. Instead, “provision of space to connect” with other staff members would be “more important”.
The document also says that the move to Smart Working will reduce the number of staff based full-time on campus.
The group recommends that a working group be set up to look into how the hubs and new developments on campus could work.
College is also looking to implement a number of new technologies to enhance teaching and learning.
The paper also recommended that College “move all large class lectures (>100) to online delivery (synchronous or asynchronous) so that large lecture theatres can be reconfigured to facilitate collaborative learning”.
The Trinity Futures group did not recommend that undergraduate teaching transition to a permanent online-only structure. Instead it advocated for the use of technology to enhance and support teaching and learning, such as “provision of online content, lecture capture, collaborative group activities, online polling and student-led discussions, and online assessments”.
The report also mooted the use of lecturer holograms “being projected into a student’s visual space”. This, the group argued, “could facilitate a more engaging experience instead of a ‘talking head’ online delivery”.
The cost of providing virtual-reality lectures could be costly in the short term, the report noted, but “augmented reality does not require expensive hardware”.
“Immersive technology is an area that Trinity should be considering for the future and Trinity’s research expertise in this area should be harnessed to develop innovative educational approaches.”
In the preamble of the paper, the group states that “change that is introduced in adversity can also be sustainable for the future. In that context, it is timely to consider the medium- to long-term opportunities, as well as constraints and other issues, for Trinity’s future”.
