Vice-Chancellor's Report to University Council 2018/2019

ACCESS RepositioningWhoWe Are to Meet the Needs of Society The Mona Campus has made consistent gains over the year to ensure that our brand as the premier tertiary institution for students, for research and knowledge outputs, for creative and innovative thinking about our societal and regional future, remains firmly rooted in the hearts and minds of our stakeholders. The academic year 2018/2019 was an eventful one for The UWI, Mona. The Campus concluded its 70 th Anniversary celebrations, commemorating 1948 when the College first opened its doors to 33 medical students from across the Caribbean. Seventy-one years later, the Campus boasts a population of over 19,000 students in over 300 programmes across 7 faculties. During the year under review, the Mona Campus made great strides in realising the objective of being the University of choice. Our publication output in reputable journals showed consistent growth over the last four years . The Mona Campus made some progress in widening access to a UWI education. We converted some face- to-face programmes for online delivery and hosted the Ground Breaking Ceremony in Montego Bay for the planned expansion of the Western Jamaica Campus. The Mona Campus Research Days were one of our highpoints for the year. The exposition and events demonstrated the impressive spread and interdisciplinary nature of our research and the links that we are making between Campus research and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Digitisation We continued to view Digitisation as a key to

will lead the expansion of online delivery of courses and programmes across the Campus. The focus of the Office encouraged a more effective use of the Campus’ Learning Management System (LMS) for teaching and learning, guiding the conversion of existing courses for blended and online delivery, and reviewing and drafting guidelines to facilitate standardisation of existing online delivery efforts at the Campus level. The successes and challenges of meeting the Triple A Strategic pillars of Access, Agility and Alignment which underpin the objectives to be met by the initiatives of departments, faculties and individuals, and provide a scorecard for measuring our performance as a Campus. are analysed under the following metrics.

transformation of processes used both in administration and in the primary service we offer of teaching and communication of knowledge products. The process of moving to a fully digitised University began this year with selected first steps that will be accelerated in the next. These included assistance to research and teaching in the form of improved online processes and tools, improvements in our application processes, facilitating staff access to publications, enhancing citation indices for journals and the measurement of impact factors. The Campus Office of Online Learning (COOL) is central to the fulfillment of the Mona Campus’ Digital Transformation initiative. Established in January, COOL

Senior members of Faculties (Heads of Department, Deputy Deans) and Managers of Administrative Units during a Radical Collaboration Training Session

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