Planning is underway to reintroduce “large lectures with modifications,” teaching labs, classroom-based learning, and tutorials from September.
Senior sources in the government told the Irish Times that a framework for third-level institutions is set to be brought to cabinet next week by Minister for Higher Education Simon Harris.
College bars, canteens, and sports facilities are also slated to reopen.
Large lectures will be facilitated by reducing the capacity of lecture halls and changing timetables to decrease the number of students on campus.
Accommodation supports are also being developed for students, with an option to pay rent monthly along with the ability to terminate a lease at one month’s notice included in the plans, according to the Irish Times.
These terms will likely apply to both on-campus as well as private accommodation.
Colleges will be “required to provide for the needs of vulnerable or high-risk staff and students”.
For over a year at Trinity, the vast majority of teaching has taken place online. While in-person laboratory practicals took place in person for many students in semester one of this academic year, school of chemistry laboratories were forced to shut after College instituted a one hour and forty-five minute limit on in-person activities.
Harris spoke last week on RTÉ Radio One’s Morning Ireland programme, promising that “We are getting our students and our staff back to college.”
Describing the last year as “rotten” for students, he said that university teaching and learning would be “primarily” on-site next academic year.
He added that the “emerging picture” indicates that students will return to classroom-based teaching, tutorials, and workshops. He also said that libraries and on-campus bars would likely reopen, and that clubs and societies would also return.
Harris said that he expected most students to be vaccinated by the time the next college term begins, and that staff should also be “overwhelmingly vaccinated”.
While at the time the minister described in-person large-scale lectures as one of the biggest challenges for the coming year, it now appears that they will take place in some form.
In the interview with Morning Ireland last week, Harris hinted that one measure he would like to see remain in place is the use of recorded lectures.
He pointed out that while much of the last year has been a change for the worse, it’s important that Colleges retain the “positives” of the last year.
