‘Virtual Experience at Universal Business School during Covid-19 pandemic’

 

    FARHEEN INAMDAR                                   Batch: PGDMBDI1                                                                                         

Being excited about my admission getting confirmed in Universal Business School, I started daydreaming about how life will be on campus. This would be my first time staying away from home in a hostel managing things on my own. But soon in mid-March the nation-wide lockdown was announced. At first I thought everything will be back to normal by July but as time passed things got more serious.

This did not affect the programs planned by UBS, the Pre-Program Activities started off by Dean Digital Challenge, which allowed us to pen down a little note about ourselves. On 6^th April 2020, a webinar by Prof Vijay Tandon was arranged in which we got to know about how our induction programs and classes have been scheduled. We had a 30 days Induction Program started from 10^th April 2020. This included session by CEOs, business leaders, alumni. It gave us sense of how being on campus would have felt like. By each passing day the excitement of being on campus increased as well as the cases in Maharashtra. By 26^th May, online classes began different modes of learnings were introduced such as collpoll and e-library.

Classes are virtual but learning is real. The first question that occurred was how is it possible to interact on a platform without knowing or meeting my Professors or batchmates. To my surprise we did managed to not only interact but also form groups and do various group assignments and tasks. Slowly overtime the frequency of the classes held were increased to every alternate day to daily classes. Also the number of classes per day were increased from 1 to 3. I thought being a first year

MBA student all the basic concepts of marketing, business and economics will not covered but to my surprise at least 2-3 classes were solely designed to tell students the basic concepts of each subject. Each student were assigned a mentor who helps them in acknowledging and enhancing their skills. Each student was given the freedom to select a club according to their interests. These clubs helped students to get to know students who had similar interests.

During the whole pandemic UBS ensured to keep the students engaged with different activities, assignments, presentations and competitions.

The experience has been surreal it allowed me to learn, grow and be confident. It made me realized the value of education and it can change one’s thinking from being worried about my future in the beginning to looking for opportunities to grow. I made friendship which I’ll cherish for life. Every Professor taught us learnings are endless and Unlocked new possibilities.

 

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