If your parents are anything like mine, you need to let them know at least a month in advance when you want transport back to Nottingham. Otherwise, you’ll be sat on a National Express coach for 5 hours having paid an extra £50 in excess luggage fees. Luckily for you, Impact is here to fill you in on the updated academic calendar so you can avoid coach trauma.
Teaching this year is going to look a little different. Lectures will take place online but where possible, smaller group activities will be delivered in person. In order to adhere to social distancing guidelines, labs, seminars and workshops will have fewer students than normal so more sessions will need to be scheduled in order to teach everyone. Clearly, to accommodate the additional classes as well as the more frequent cleaning of rooms, more time needs to be found.
In addition to extra teaching weeks, some Schools may decide to schedule sessions outside regular teaching hours: later in the evening, earlier in the morning or on Saturdays.
The University has made a number of changes to ensure that everyone receives the same number of teaching hours as planned. The creation of five extra teaching weeks has been made possible by shortening the Christmas and Easter holidays to three weeks instead of four and by removing the January exam period. Autumn semester modules will mostly be assessed by coursework or open-book exams and if a physical exam is necessary, this will be postponed until May/June. In addition to the extra teaching weeks, some Schools may decide to schedule sessions outside of regular teaching hours: later in the evening, earlier in the morning or on Saturdays.
It is worth noting that not all Schools will need to make use of the extra teaching weeks or alter the length of the teaching day and will instead deliver their modules over the usual term period. Your School will let you know which changes apply to you.
The new academic year looks like this:
- Autumn Term: Monday 21 September 2020 – Friday 18 December 2020
- Spring Term: Monday 11 January 2021 – Friday 26 March 2021
- Summer Term: Monday 19 April 2021 – Friday 18 June 2021
Now send a message to your family group chat and make a note on the kitchen calendar to get Mum or Dad to escort you to Nottingham by 21 September. You can spend those first few days enjoying Welcome Week, before getting your brain into gear ready for teaching to begin on 28th September.
Ruth Bentley
Featured image courtesy of Shamraze/Nuhaize via Flickr. Image license found here. No changes were made to this image.
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