UNISA students will receive a major boost ahead of the Unisa May/June 2020 examinations, courtesy of a partnership between Unisa and MTN.
The two organisations concluded a business agreement that will see all currently registered Unisa students receive 30GB of data per month (10GB anytime and 20GB night time) for a period of 2 months from mid-May to mid-July 2020.
The full details of this agreement, including the procedure to access the offering, will be communicated to students shortly.
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According to Unisa, the offer of free data to all currently registered students during this period is a necessary and timely intervention by the university to create an enabling environment for students who will be sitting for non-venue-based examinations.
These examinations start on 25 May 2020 and it is vital that students have access to sufficient data and connectivity to successfully complete their examinations.
Unisa’s contribution, worth a whopping R59,72 million over a period of two months, will offer its student population of about 390 000 about 24 million gigabytes during this period.
While the free data access has been provided specifically as an intervention to facilitate the easy completion of the May/June 2020 examinations, students may use the data and connectivity during this period to conduct other academic activities such as the submission of assignments online, online contact with the university as well as preparations for the online examinations.
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Unisa Principal and Vice-Chancellor, Professor Mandla Makhanya, pointed out that the Covid-19 pandemic necessitated the introduction of online modes of doing business across many spheres of society, including in the higher education sector.
He further stressed that even though Unisa has always been an Open Distance and e-Learning (ODeL) university, the Covid-19 pandemic has compelled the university to reconsider some of its academic activities that still required physical application, such as venue-based examinations and the submission of hard copy assignments, and confine these strictly to online application.
“Being fully cognisant of the dire socio-economic conditions that many of our students find themselves in, we took a considered decision that all our students must have access to data, with the university carrying the cost, so that they are enabled to write their exams and succeed in their studies. Our partnership with MTN is also ideal in this regard, not only because of the favourable rate they have given us, but most importantly because of the size of their footprint and their reach,” added Makhanya.
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