At the University of Pretoria (UP), student support remains a priority and, regardless of the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the University takes every opportunity to remain a healthy part of the lives of its students.

The Finish Line is Yours at the University of Pretoria (FLY@UP) is the tagline of a programme that aims to encourage students to complete their academic qualifications during the stipulated time. Recently, the FLY@UP programme took its services online by curating an entirely virtual Student Support Day.

Dr Hestie Byles, Manager: Academic Advising and FLY@UP, which is located in the Department of Education Innovation, explained that it is important for them to support students on their academic journeys.

“The FLY@UP initiative not only wants students to graduate on time, but to graduate at the best of their abilities,” she said. “This initiative equips students with the necessary knowledge about resources, tips and skills that they can apply to reach their finish lines and even after reaching these academic finish lines, in terms of work readiness. We aim to get students to realise that all this is possible if they take responsibility for their degrees by putting in the necessary hard work and reaching out to the support services that have been made available to help them on their journey to attaining their degrees.”

This is also what the virtual support day aimed to achieve, with the programme making use of the Kumospace platform and allowing students to move between virtual rooms, which consisted of various services. These services included FLY@UP, Student Health Services, the Student Counselling Unit, the Department of Library Services, Career Services, Faculty Student Advisors, Peer Advisors and Student Leadership.

Some students who attended the event commented on how much they enjoyed it and got out of it. “I enjoyed the casual nature of the event,” Chrizelda Visser said. “I got to ask questions that usually feel too silly to ask in an email. It is great how dynamic the event was, with the option of turning your audio/video on or off; you could also look around on your own and at your own pace. The extras in the event such as using the white board made it feel like a video game, which made it so much fun.”

For Thapelo Legodi it was the informative nature of the event that captured his attention. “The rooms that I visited were informative, especially Career Services, which focused on having a career plan and can assist in increasing my employability and choosing employers.”

Dr Byles added that FLY@UP had also launched a newsletter to keep students updated on support services available to them and to create a mini community so that they never feel alone. “FLY@UP approached all the support services and invited them to share their contact information with us to publish in the newsletter,” she said. “In future, we hope to publish a similar newsletter every three to four months. Each newsletter will have a unique theme that has relevance to the time of year. Look out for our next newsletter later in the year, in which we will share exam preparation tips and everything that students need to make the exam season a successful one.”

FLY@UP will be hosting another virtual support day on 17 November 2021. To keep up to date with all things related to the programme, visit the Facebook or Instagram pages @flyatup

Read the latest newsletter