Thanks for your support and preparing for the next academic year.

Apeldoorn, 11-6-2020

Dear WUAS Students

We are hopefully now reaching the end of this period in which you have not been able to attend lessons in the classroom. The whole world has been affected by this enormous COVID-19 pandemic and it has affected every university, college, and business school, in every country across the planet. To ensure that all students at Wittenborg could be guaranteed that they would have no study delay, or study break, we took far-reaching methods to insure that your bachelor and master studies could be delivered in such a way that it was still possible to achieve credits in the full-time study program. This is especially important for students on a study Visa, as COVID-19 has not been stipulated as a reason for students not to achieve their credits.

We are extremely proud of our staff for the effective way in which they have managed to provide full-time education to you, our students under such difficult conditions. We are not an online university we do not deliver online degree programmes. However in this unusual time we were legally obliged to stop all classroom activity, and therefore had to deliver our programmes online! We are especially proud of the way that you have reacted to this situation, and continued to study and learn and achieve credits in this way. Special compliments to those of you who actually started your studies online, ready to arrive when you are able to. Thank you everyone.

Since the pandemic started, Wittenborg has been able to function normally as a business school, and we are confident that we have done this in the best possible way. We have not had to ask for government assistance, as we are not in a situation to do so, even though the circumstances that led to us having to deliver online during this time were imposed by government. All of our staff have remained working - mainly from home however more and more often staff are returning to work. The registry department has remained working at their offices throughout this period. Wittenborg is proud that we have achieved all this whilst many other universities and business schools have basically ‘shut up shop’, and there are reports that many students have encountered delays, or will do next year.

Getting back to normal

Wittenborg opened its Spoorstraat and Amsterdam locations since the 2nd of June and book and library facilities are again available. During the last block Wittenborg has invested heavily in online databases of journals, books and successfully extending our ICT infrastructure to facilitate online delivery. These investments will help make our education provision in the future even better.

Last Tuesday, we even hosted an NVAO accreditation panel for a successful accreditation of our MBM Master programme. Thanks to those of you who supported us in this.

We are now getting towards the end of Block 7, the end of the academic year, and preparing to move all classes back into school locations as from Block 1.

To do this we will have to take some measures that will ensure that not more students than possible are in a classroom at the same time and we shall also have to programme lessons from morning to evening according to government guidelines however we aim to run a normal timetable as far as we possibly can. We will also continue to support all students online as needed, which is especially important for those who cannot attend class on location, due to travel restrictions at that time, or individual health concerns.

Laptops in class

All lessons will be run on location and students are required to attend with laptops (or tablets), as lessons will be using Moodle and Teams to teach, but also so that students who cannot attend can also follow online. Laptops should have a wireless connection to Eduroam configured and have a battery capacity to last the lessons on that day, as charging capacity in classrooms is limited. For questions on this please contact helpdesk@wittenborg.eu .

Attendance versus Participation

Attendance requirement will not be re-introduced, however we will maintain the participation requirement for taught modules. We will ensure that teachers make the ‘participation’ is manageable and not increasing the study load, however adding to the learning experience.

We would like to make it perfectly clear that we are not delivering online programmes and that all of our degrees are full-time degrees (actually obligatory for any student on a study visa). In the future we may offer some part time degrees online for students outside of the Netherlands, however this will not affect our current programmes on location.

We will update you during the course of the coming weeks on further preparations and developments.

Thanks!

Once again, we would like to thank you all for helping us and each other to get through this most unusual and disruptive time.

We are looking forward to running experiential education again, firmly based in the classroom from August.

In the meantime, stay safe, follow the government guidelines and keep healthy!

Very best wishes, on behalf of the whole Management Team

Peter Birdsall,

President