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This was mainly attributed to the lower telecom costs in those regions due to their breaking of the telecom monopoly a few years before Trinidad. It was still economically feasible though and after many years the campus in Barbados installed a high-speed link to Miami in 2013. This officially inaugurated the creation of the university’s Research and Education Network.
This enhanced connectivity supported one of the major themes under the university’s strategic plan to create a Single Virtual University System that allowed the university to appear as a single entity to users and external stakeholders.
It was designed to allow researchers and students to travel between campuses and have seamless access to campus resources. It also facilitates the sharing of information and greater collaboration between lecturers and researchers on the different campuses.
Academic programs were then designed and implemented that utilized components from various campuses allowing students to graduate from their home campus regardless of the origin of the course components. These programs allow students residing on different islands to participate simultaneously with lecturers who are physically on different islands.
The University of the West Indies has full wireless coverage for all classrooms, common areas and most offices and students can use multiple devices on campus.
In the past, each student was allowed only one active device on the network which had to be authenticated with the campus’s records. Students are now encouraged to BYOD (bring your own device), which forced adjustments to the management of the wireless network.
Today, it is not unusual for a student to come to campus with a laptop, a tablet and a phone each connecting to the wireless network. The campus opened a wireless cloud to facilitate easy connection to the Internet for students using any device. That has been instrumental towards enabling the connected classroom initiative for the campus.
The university has not just evolved over the years as far as the implementation of technology is concerned. It has driven growth and development in this area aggressively as technology has been seen as a mission-critical enabler and driver for competitiveness and impact.
Each UWI campus has evolved at different rates and their administrative and IT systems and initiatives were not identical. This naturally created challenges, but with the support of higher administration and solid infrastructure platforms in place, the future looks very bright for the University of the West Indies to continue driving social, economic, political, cultural and environmental development for the Caribbean region and beyond. g