By Nevil Carrington
The coronavirus struck Explore like a thunderstorm, and little did we know the impact it would have. All project plans for the year were cancelled, as these all involved travel and contact with potential facilitators. Our existing facilitators were also taken off-guard and it took a while till everybody found their feet again. Groups began meeting through Zoom or WhatsApp and students began to think about exams. This led to the next crisis – how do we hold exams? We hastily drew up an indemnity form and instructed facilitators to provide us with e-mail addresses for somebody responsible in the home of each student. The process worked and we had 166 students write exams in the middle of the storm.
Explore will be going online before we return to the office and we are well down the path in developing an Explore web-page, which contains an automated enrolment system. In addition, students who have steady Internet access will enter the Explore classroom where they will obtain all their Explore notes and will be able to write their exams in a multiple-choice system with immediate feedback. The virus has given us some breathing space to prepare for all these changes including a revised Explore brand to be launched shortly.
