The Vice Chancellor of Makerere University Professor Barnabas Nawangwe has concluded a meeting today with the CEO of MTN Wim Vanhellepute where they discussed issues of E-learning services to students and staff that are accessible at zero rate.
This development follows the recent COVID-19 outbreak that has affected usual learning of the students and since there is no communicated or confirmed date of resuming learning, the university is finding ways to make it accessible to students.
There is a possibility that even when universities are able to resume, social distancing will still be a protective measure so in order to reduce congestion and unnecessary movements to the university, e-learning services will still be available for the students.
The meeting was to enable students and staff access Makerere online resources at zero cost. This system has been adopted by some universities in South Africa and Makerere University is following suit. It is seen as the next major break through for education in the hard times we are all going through.
Students and staff of the university will be given more information on how to access the resources once they are available and up for use. Talks with Airtel officials are also still underway in-order to make the service available for the Airtel users as well and at zero cost.
According to the statistics gathered, 95% of the students at Makerere University own smart phones and are able to access the internet. Measures are still underway for the students that aren’t able to access these.
