Update 3: 23 July 2020
Academic Preparations for September 2020: Making Education Safe
Preparations to welcome students back to the GSA in September are continuing at a pace. Central to this welcome is a process of adapting the GSA to the public health requirements in the light of the COVID-19 pandemic. To help us do this, we are depending on three conditions for making decisions:
is what we’re suggesting safe, legal, and educationally viable?
Each one of these conditions needs to be demonstrated as we go through the process of adaptation. This process involves resetting buildings in the light of Safe Campus requirements, reconfiguring learning and teaching approaches, and reframing studio.
Resetting buildings
Over the last two weeks, Heads of Schools have entered the GSA’s buildings to assess how to use them safely in the academic session ahead. In doing this we have paid attention to the public health guidelines from the Scottish Government, including guidance for creative studios and shared workspaces, and the UK Government on safe approaches to being in universities, creative studios, and performance spaces.
Each type of space has slightly different guidance and we are working to ensure that appropriate approaches to studios, technical workshops, library facilities, and technology requirements are balanced.
Reinterpreting how best to use the space across the campus for learning and teaching is complex and in order to do this coherently, the GSA is applying these core questions:
1. How can we ensure the space is safe for you and the staff who will teach and support students?
2. How do we maintain the quality and standard of education given any limitations such safety might bring?
3. How do we build multiple scenarios in these circumstances that are responsive to changes in public health guidelines so that we ensure learning is not disrupted more than necessary by the COVID-19 pandemic?
What do we mean by Safe Campus?
Before COVID-19, GSA embraced managing health and safety as part of a risk-based approach required by all higher education institutions in the UK. COVID-19, however, has required a further extension of that risk-based approach. In particular, we are applying protocols designed to minimise the possibility of exposure to coronavirus. These protocols are being developed through the GSA’s Safe Campus Group, the GSA’s estates team, and consultants who specialise in spatial reconfiguration and occupancy. We refer to these protocols as providing a Safe Campus.
The principles of safe campus are as follows:
Firstly, the GSA will at all times follow public health guidance as disseminated in relation to COVID-19 by the Scottish Government. This includes consideration of the following:
Full risk assessment of all the campus buildings (Glasgow and Forres) covering:
- Compliance with the necessary social distancing in offices, studios, social spaces, other teaching spaces, classrooms, hallways and corridors.Controlled timetabled access to all buildings with strict distance and enhanced hygiene protocols observed.
- Marking of areas for increased attention through signs and floor markings.
- Particular protections for areas with public access (e.g. reception, library).
- Explicit management of visitors (no external visitors without an appointment).
- Explicit hygiene protocols regarding bathrooms and kitchens.
- Recognition of the specific needs of vulnerable staff and students.
- Identification of appropriate working time and room allocation models for each area in accordance with the public health defined levels of safety and security.
Secondly, the GSA is both a place of learning and a workplace for many staff. GSA operations will be characterised by a much-reduced on-site presence of both students and staff.
- Where possible staff and students are encouraged to work from home.
- Where working from home is not possible, there will be a much stricter control of the time and type of access to the GSA’s buildings than in normal circumstances.
- Occupancy of teaching spaces will be limited in terms of the time you are able to spend on-site, where you will be located and how you will be encouraged to circulate between buildings. These restrictions are in place to minimise unintended interactions and exposure.
- Unintended additional visits and visitors to your allocated space are, unfortunately, not permitted.
- Facemasks/coverings will be required as advised through public health guidelines, for example, on public transport and in shops. This includes during travel to and from the GSA campus and around our local communities.
Thirdly, Safe Campus also refers to activities within the curriculum that are undertaken through study abroad or exchange with partner institutions.
With this in mind, the GSA has a revised policy for study abroad or exchange opportunities focused on our three interconnected conditions – safe, lawful, educationally viable in the pandemic context – before a study abroad or exchange placement can be confirmed.
Reframing learning and teaching
Alongside reconfiguring our buildings, the GSA is also reframing how education is delivered. This is being done using the same questions outlined above and looking at the best possible balance of physical and online learning and teaching in the light of the various potential phases of lockdown as outlined by the Scottish Government.
Key to the approach is balancing what is and has been normally possible against what is realistic and educationally viable in the current context.
In doing this, the GSA recognises that what we are able to offer is not necessarily what students had hoped for or experienced before. It will be, nonetheless, equivalent in quality and standards, allowing students to continue their education and continue to be challenged in their development as creative practitioners, artists, designers, architects.
Behind of all this, as noted above, we are governed by our three core conditions: is what we’re suggesting safe, legal, and educationally viable?
Reframing studio
In managing this process, the GSA believes that it can provide a safe, high standard, studio-centred education by reframing studio experiences in the following way:
- Virtual Teaching Studio: the GSA will manage continuity of provision by establishing the primary teaching mode through online delivery mechanisms. This is to ensure that a student’s education can continue regardless of the phase of lockdown the GSA finds itself in over the course of the next academic session. This mode of delivery is referred to as the GSA’s virtual teaching studios.
- Safe Physical Studio: the GSA will augment virtual teaching studio with reconfigured access to the GSA’s campuses using the guidelines of Safe Physical Campus. This does affect how physical studios, workshops, and the library are accessed and the GSA is currently, working on more detailed information at a programme level.
- Civic Studio: the GSA will augment both virtual teaching studio and safe physical studio through consideration of outdoor educational activities where lockdown phases allow this. We have always valued the relationships the GSA has within its locations and local communities and the pandemic has not changed this.
- Cross-GSA Student Community Studio: the GSA will supplement academic delivery with a creatively produced central Student Engage offer, based online and emphasising cross-GSA informal learning activities as well as student peer-to-peer events.
- Supported Studio: Surrounding all of this will be Supported Studio, which will help us maximise how student learning is supported through realistic deployment of the Technical Support Department, Library Resources, and Student Support Services.
23 July 2020