President of the Guild of Students at the University of the West Indies, Mona Christina Williams is urging students to prepare for the change in teaching modality that they will encounter once school resumes on April 14.

The UWI is making preparations to start teaching online classes as it deals with the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

“Many of the courses taught at UWI, Mona were not online, so generally speaking, I don’t think students mindsets are ready. But what I’ve said to the students is that for this 30 days that you are in your home, as much as possible as you can get ready, do so,” she said.

Williams told BUZZ that she has been advocating for the government to aid in providing zero-rated platforms for students, as she believes Internet-accessibility will be an issue with online classes.

“We had a meeting with State Minister for Education Alando Terrelonge, as well as Minister of Science and Technology Fayval Williams, and they were very receptive to the call.

“What the Guild is looking at now is to go a step further by engaging the service providers to say in the case that zero-rating does not work out, or it does not work out in the time frame that we need, we want you to subsidize the data and wifi plans for students,” she said.

In the meantime, Williams is also encouraging students to adapt to the changes that the coronavirus pandemic will create.

“COVID-19 has revolutionized the world, the world that we’re going to have post COVID-19 is going to be a different world. A lot of things that we used to shun before like online learning and teaching, work from home, flexi work week, all of those things are now going to become the norm,” she said.