An email sent out to Philosophy research students has confirmed that on Friday, the IT staff at the University of York will be working from home in order to “test our readiness in the event of a large number of staff having to work from home due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak.”.
The email, sent out by IT Support on Tuesday, tells students that the University will be treating Friday’s test as a “normal working day as much as we can”, by still allowing students to contact IT Support via phone and email. However, in person appointments will not be available. It is important to emphasise that this will be a temporary move, although it is unclear at this time whether this will change.
The move from the University may not be surprising to some, especially considering that many universities and colleges across the world have started to implement remote teaching technology in order to curb the spread of the virus without disrupting the education of their students. According to the New York Times, all 50,000 students at the University of Washington will have all their classes taught online. It is unclear if, or when, universities in the UK will start doing the same.