The COVID-19 pandemic threatened National University of Samoa with closure last year, but quick action by the institution's administrators saw 91 per cent of all 381 registered courses switch to Moodle.

Details of the university's challenges during the pandemic and the ability of the NUS administration to overcome them were highlighted in the 2021 Annual Report for the period 1 July 2020 to 30 June 2021.

The annual report said that by 2 March 2021 close to 100 per cent of all its registered courses had switched to Moodle with the Faculty of Business and Entrepreneurship and the School of Maritime Training the best performers in terms of adapting to the change.

"As of 2nd March, 91 per cent of all 381 registered courses were fully on Moodle with the Faculty of Business and Entrepreneurship (FOBE) and the School of Maritime Training (SOMT) having a 100 per cent of their courses online," stated the university's annual report.

"The Faculty of Technical Education (FOTE) had the lowest at 44 per cent due to the nature of their courses but this percentage has improved since last year."

According to the NUS annual report, more staff have adjusted to multimodal delivery, which the university said was being encouraged as it planned for full-time courses and or programmes to go online in the next four years.

"Last year [2020], we invested heavily in our ICT capability to meet current and future needs of online education.

"The development of an Education TV channel is another step up in our efforts at building capacity and resilience.

"The support of the two ISP providers in Digicel and Vodafone was and is critical to our ongoing success in this area."

The NUS annual report said it had also "identified courses and programmes" which it believed could be delivered "completely online", as they awaited a technical advisor "to assist with curriculum design and other technical issues", in order to move the courses incrementally with appropriate preparation and support of the relevant staff. 

"For example, the FOE can deliver 90 per cent of their courses completely online. We have received assurance from the Samoa Qualifications Authority (SQA) that a move to online delivery will not affect the accredited status of courses, although new standards in Distributed and Distance Instruction (DDI) are being developed by the World Federation of Medical Education (WFME) which the School of Medicine [at NUS] may have to meet as part of international accreditation."

The university administration said they were also "very aware" of what threatened the success of online learning and lifelong learning at that time – the availability and accessibility of students to technology devices and WIFI.

"Two of our separate surveys last month had shown that only 4 per cent of TVET students (Faculty of Technical Education, FOTE) have a laptop and 35 per cent have a smartphone with 26 per cent having no internet access at home," stated the annual report. 

"If we are going to be successful in delivering online education, then we need to address at an institution and country the other parts of the equation."