Free tablets will be provided to University of the South Pacific students.
USP has revealed this in an exclusive interview with Fiji One as part of boosting E-Learning for students.
The tablet cost around $250 and will be provided this year not only at the Laucala campus but around the region.
USP has already set aside how much all the tablets will cost them.
They have also sent out some tablets to the other campuses for undergraduate year 1 students.
” It will have full capacity for the students to do their assignments , to use it for internet, access module, etc and basically that means that students can learn anywhere, anytime and they don’t have to go to the labs, they can do what they normally do in the lab on their notebooks, if they need to use some heavyduty computing that can still go to the labs” said Vice Chancellor Professor Rajesh Chandra
The free tablets given to the students will also not affect the fees, this means there will be no increase in the fees if students are receiving the tablets.
“But essentially there’s a very big movement to give people autonomy and flexibility to learn and then to provide all of the digital resources that make it useful and to make it easy because the students are being set up in a way that they don’t have to load anything as soon as they are within the campus all the appropriate materials are loaded for them ” said Chandra
Students will also be able to take the tablets home.
When asked if the tablets are damaged by the students or if they lose them, the Vice Chancellor said they are still working out these details.
” We are trying to work out all those details and we’ll have to look at how much of this is intentional , carelessness and how much of that is unavoidable so this is the first time we’re running, we will probably ask students to have a refundable deposit to encourage them to treat their valuable property and look after it and then we’re working with the students association closely to see what is the best arrangement in this situation”
This initiative will also be introduced to other students and USP is already working on it.