Supporting our Students Through the Pandemic

We hope that by the time you embark on your university journey, the COVID-19 pandemic will be behind us, lockdowns will be a thing of the past and we can all look back and laugh at all the crazy Tik Tok videos we made to fill the time.

It goes without saying, it has been a difficult time and the thought of going to university might be distant. We wanted to address any doubts you might have and share with you how we responded to the crisis. Our top priority was, and always is, the safety, mental, emotional and physical wellbeing of our students, and also ensuring the quality of our teaching and learning remained high.

Student experience of studying during a pandemic

Remote Learning

Currently, we are the third largest provider of online learning in the UK and have many years of experience and success in operating flexible learning through on campus, online and blended teaching. This extensive experience allowed us to

rapidly transition successfully to remote

learning for all our teaching and assessments. Read how The Law School adapted to the online delivery of workshops.

Virtual Placements

Where it wasn’t possible to have students physically working with placement providers, we were able to move many placements online to ensure students could still practice their skills virtually and not lose out on this experience. Physiotherapy student Beinn, shares his experience of undertaking an integrated virtual and clinical placement during the pandemic.

Beinn Vlog Part 1 Beinn Vlog Part 2

Student Support & Wellbeing

Our full range of student support and advice services continued to be available online, including: the Library, Inclusion Centre: Disability and Dyslexia, Student Counselling and Wellbeing and our employability service. Find out more about some of the work our Student Counsellors undertook during the pandemic and beyond.

RGU SPORT launched a range of initiatives and resources to support our students and the wider community to look after their mental and physical wellbeing whilst staying at home. This included free online group exercise classes and free student memberships when they reopened, virtual personal training, physical activity challenges and mental wellbeing resources.

Our teaching staff went above and beyond to support our students. The School of Computing utilised technology to remain approachable and accessible to their students, and the School of Engineering sent out tools and small pieces of equipment to their students to ensure they didn’t miss out on the practical elements of their course.

It was not only our staff who worked hard to support our students, but the students themselves. The RGU Computing Society used virtual games and tools to engage and build a sense of community.

Going Virtual

As well as our teaching and learning, our events, graduations and student exhibitions also turned virtual.

Many of our students were looking forward to exhibiting work as part of the annual Gray’s School of Art Degree Show, or Master of Architecture Final Year Exhibition, which would normally take place on campus. Instead we created a fully immersive

Virtual Degree Show for Gray’s School of Art graduating students, and worked with Aberdeen Art Gallery and The Pier Arts Centre to develop a collaborative virtual exhibition ‘Drawn North’ for our final year Architecture students. Student events including our Year 1 Fashion Exhibition in the School of Creative and Cultural Business were not able to take place, but our staff and students showed incredible resilience and flexibility to turn the situation into a valuable learning experience.

We were unable to hold our traditional graduation ceremonies for our graduating students, instead we held Virtual Graduations to celebrate the achievements and success of the students. It was enormously important to us that we were able to mark the occasion and ensure our students’ hard work and dedication was celebrated.

A Sense of Community

Life changed for us all when the pandemic hit, but through a real collaborative effort, we’ve pulled on all our resources across the University to do our bit to help the community and support the fight against COVID-19.

With the need for additional healthcare resource, many of our healthcare students showed huge commitment and continued with their practice placements to support the NHS. Others worked in RGU’s COVID-19 Test Centre, approaching the initiative as a healthcare placement. The opportunity allowed students to gain experience of working in a clinical environment, develop key communication skills and confidence in working with people and support their fellow students.

Nursing students supporting the fight against COVID-19

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