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Universities shifting towards online again 

01 Jul 2022

  • Uva Wellassa and Pera universities to transition to online lectures, free data provided; VCs to inform of fuel requirement including for generators to Prez Secy.  
  • Pera sans LPG for 8,000 plus hostellers; Jaffna Uni initiates community kitchen  
  BY Buwanajee Coralage   With most other universities conducting online lectures for their students given the current crisis situation in the country, steps have been taken to transition all academic activities to an online setting, especially in the Uva Wellassa and Peradeniya universities, the University Grants Commission (UGC) said. Speaking to The Morning on Wednesday (29 June), UGC Chairman Senior Prof. Sampath Amaratunge said: “There’s nothing as a complete closure of universities now. They just transition to online platforms for academic activities. The Peradeniya and Uva Wellassa universities will continue their academic activities completely online while most of the other universities are carrying out most of their activities online given the travel restrictions due to the fuel crisis at present.”  It was noted that the closure of the largest State university, the Peradeniya University, was purely attributed to the difficulty in sourcing liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) to feed 8,000-plus residential students of the university. The Jaffna University was recognised as the only university to hold physical lectures under the crisis situation and it can be attributed to the unique establishment of a community kitchen within the university, where the neighbouring community has come together to source materials and provide the students and faculty members with a free meal each day. Under this special care, a situation has arisen where students are comfortable continuing academic activities physically. “This can be considered a worthy example to other communities, where the neighbouring community of the Jaffna University has taken the initiative to provide the students and faculty one free meal, which can be considered a lot under the current circumstances,” noted Prof. Amaratunge. Furthermore, he said that students are being provided with free data facilities to attend lectures through the university browsers and that necessary measures are being taken to continue activities as scheduled without any delay. To proceed further in the current fuel crisis, the Vice Chancellors (VCs) of all universities have been instructed to report on the minimum fuel requirement which is to be presented to the President’s Secretary soon. Additionally, the Open University’s requirement of a minimum of 450 litres of petrol for the operation of the generator to run their data centre to hold lectures online is to be taken into consideration with the above.


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