UCU student leaders slam e-learning

EDUCATION | UCU

The Uganda Christian University (UCU) guild leadership has slammed the university's e-learning programme that was introduced after the COVID-19 lockdown.

The university introduced the programme after the Government re-opened learning for final year students in October.

The students' leaders said the system is slow and overwhelmed by the big number of students who log in at the same time.

They added that some students are in places where there is no network, whereas others lack gadgets such as laptops and smartphones which are a prerequisite for the programme.

Nevertheless, the leaders acknowledge that the university's innovativeness has enabled some students to continue with their studies.

Phoebe Desire Namujehe, the guild president of the UCU campus in Kampala, said: "Sometimes, students do not succeed in logging in. We think this is resulting from the platform overload."

"The system even logs out the lecturers in the middle of the lecture," Namujehe said.

Kenneth Agaba Amponda, the UCU, Mukono guild president, advised the university to separate the learning sessions of students at different campuses.

Amponda said the login is always successful for the first 20-100 students and gives hardships to the rest that try getting into the system.

The vice-chancellor, Prof. Aaron Mushengyezi, said before they embarked on the online studies, they conducted a study that showed that 95% of the students were ready for virtual learning because they either had smartphones or laptops.

He advised the students who are unable to enrol for the virtual lessons to register for a dead semester or year.