IADT’s Commitment to their Students – June 2020

To all IADT students

As we come to the end of the most challenging and demanding academic year, I am writing to provide you with some insight and understanding of our plans and commitments to you for our commencements in September.

As an Institute of Technology, we have worked closely with our colleagues nationally to agree on principles and practices that we can safely and confidently commit to in September. Today all of the Institute’s of Technology have published a commitment to their students for next year these are supported by extensive guidance and principles for teaching and delivery within the current public health guidelines.

From our perspective and of importance to you it states that
— IADT is fully committed to delivering a fulfilling and enriching student experience while protecting the academic integrity of our programmes and awards and abiding by all public health guidelines.

and 

— The commitment of all institutions, is to ensure that your education journey and the quality of your award is equal to that of graduates of any year.

All Third-Level Institutions will implement a blended academic offering.
For all students, this blended approach will entail a proportional replacement of face-to-face / in-class delivery with online or remote delivery. The relative amount of face-to-face and online/remote delivery will vary across our programmes and will be dependent on such factors as:

• the identified needs of individual learners and groups of learners, including those at particular stages of programmes (First Year, Final Year, etc.) and those cohorts with specific needs.
• the specific teaching and learning needs of individual disciplines
• the overall student numbers within any programme
• the available physical resources and general layouts of our teaching spaces.

Given the distinct nature of our programmes and the strong practical and applied nature of many subjects, we are committed to facilitating a substantial on-campus experience for students.

When we return, campus-life and your studies will be different. The changes that we will implement are focused on your health and ensuring you continue to progress your learning in a safe and supporting environment.

These changes are not forever, and I hope that our return to an adjusted, but more normalised campus-life will not be too far away. For now, we must work within the published guidelines and prepare accordingly. We are working on the basis that we can quickly respond to future changes in guidelines – be it a further easing in restrictions or an emergency reversal in response to an increase or spike in transmissions.

As all published guidance and public health protocols are “fluid and dynamic documents” – updated and reviewed in response to national public health information – we will continue to refresh the student information page and issue updates via IADTSU and social media channels.

Further communications will follow this week on other matters for IADT students.

With my continued support and commitment to you.
David Smith

—
David Smith President