A team of four staff Ms. Evangeline Narayan, Ms. Ashmita Darshani, Ms. Madhu Lata and Ms. Jiupili Simmons visited Labasa Campus remote students over the course of two weeks spanning more than 240kilometres to visit students at Bua, Savusavu and Taveuni. The campus visits was planned for PacTAFE Early Childhood & Education, UU 114 and SLS trips to offer students teaching time, academic skills session and meet teaching staff. Visit occurred from 20th April to 30th April, 2022. The objective of the visits to these remote areas is to ensure high retention, completion rates of students at Labasa Campus, provide student support to those that may face learning hurdles and also as an opportunity to leverage student welfare of the campus this semester due to its high enrolment intake.
Students in Bua, based at Bua Central College and Vuya District School many of whom were resuming students after a lapse of several semesters were quite overwhelmed by the vigorous online learning that USP ICT infrastructure now offers. The students need training to navigate their way around library website, SOLs, Moodle and also at the same time familiarise themselves with the USP website. Student Learning Support offered guides on academic skills, navigating USP websites and unpacking assignment questions. Vuya District School was a buzz of activity on the evening of the 20th of April, with the students from that cohort had face to face sessions with UU 114 TA, Ms Darshani. The face to face sessions were are real pleasant form of support for the students as it birthed study buddy opportunities and group work.
At Savusavu Centre and in Taveuni, students from different programmes level of study, travelling from as far as Saqani, Vaturova, South Taveuni made the time to attend ECE, English foundation and SLS sessions that would boost their learning this semester. Similar sentiments, was shared by these students that “if they had not attended they would not have known”. Postgraduate students at Savusavu and Taveuni had one on one academic skills session targeting areas of research, looking for sources of information and using USP Library databases. To see the elated smiles of the students after discovering strategies, concepts and learnt of skills to boost their academic writing courses, gave much satisfaction to the staff involved in this face to face , remote learning opportunities. Continued support will be conducted by USP Labasa Campus, as it strives to ensure that all students are assisted, and provided with the level of support they need; whether it be consultations or referrals, student support is always paramount.
