The University of Cape Town (UCT) is doing all it can to ensure its students do not have to struggle in continuing their tertiary education online.
“Each student will receive 30 to 40GB depending on their network provider, valid for 30 days, during the course of this week. The first batch of students started getting their data on Monday,” UCT said in a statement.
The university is also putting another system in place to distribute printed learning materials and USB drives to students who do not have internet access. It also provided transportation to students when residences were vacated due to the COVID-19 pandemic hitting the campus. It has also allowed students to loan laptops if they do not have access to one at home, and has launched an online orientation programme to inform students on how to navigate emergency remote learning.
MTN, Vodacom, Cell C and Telkom have also agreed to zero rate access to certain UCT sites.
“This important development will enable UCT students to learn online at no cost via these UCT sites: the UCT primary website; library website; Open UCT; the Vula student platform; Opencast lecture streaming; and web authentication ADFS [any URL that contains adfs.uct.ac.za],” UCT said. “It is important to note that authentication itself, via adfs.uct.ac.za, is zero-rated. Should staff or students be authenticating to a site other than the ones listed as zero-rated, that site will incur data charges.”
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