The Covid-19 pandemic has brought upon us a time of deep reflection and contemplation with how to approach the semesters to come. In these uncertain times, we would like to further discuss our arrangements for the year ahead.

We would like to reassure you that your safety and wellbeing are our main priority, as well as ensuring that we deliver outstanding teaching, learning and student experiences. We want to reassure you that we’re doing everything we can to enable every student to fully participate and engage in their studies, regardless of your personal or family circumstances and the changing course of the pandemic. We’re hard at work behind the scenes developing excellent, creative and interactive teaching for the start of the year. 

We have moved our induction activities and welcome events online, so that students who are unable or unwilling to attend at the Centre, may still be able to participate, with Q&A events at the end of each session as well as separate drop-in events especially to address any queries new students may have. The positive feedback from the sessions has led to the introduction of drop-in Q&A sessions to be made available to all Global MBA students, and these drop-in sessions will be conducted twice weekly on Monday and Friday, with members of the Global MBA Support Team present to address relevant queries.

As previously communicated and as many other universities have also now confirmed, workshops will be delivered online in September, and potentially for the entire semester. Nevertheless, in adherence with governmental guidelines and regulations, we will be offering the opportunity for students to attend Virtual Workshops at the Centre. Students will be able to enjoy in-person social connectivity with their peers while working in groups. To make sure we don’t exclude any of you, this hybrid-flexible, mixed-mode teaching approach combining both in-person and online face to face teaching and learning activities, allows you to choose whether or not to attend in-person activities with no ‘learning deficit’.

We are committed to improving and extending our mixed-mode learning provision and are continuing to support our brilliant teaching staff in re-designing teaching material for 2020/21, working with our Institute for Teaching and Learning and through the sharing of best practice on our Teaching and Learning Online Network. We are also currently recruiting additional e-learning and learning technology team members, to provide our colleagues with the very best support and online learning expertise. We ask for your patience and understanding that courses may have minor structural changes, and we hope you understand that any revisions we make are so as to further enhance and improve your learning experience with us.

We are very much looking forward to the new academic year and a return to a slightly different, but very safe and welcoming environment at the Manchester Worldwide S.E. Asia Centre.

From all of us at the Manchester Worldwide S.E. Asia Centre, we hope you stay safe and well. We are, as always, here to support you the best that we can through this extraordinary global situation.