As students move to the third week of classes, with the majority of classes being moved online until further notice, many students are still facing internet connectivity issues in their student accommodation.
First-year students living in Trinity Hall (Halls) in particular have reported WiFi connection issues.
After having been in school for just a week, a Junior Fresh student said that, “figuring out Blackboard wasn’t too hard”. However, the student described Zoom seminars as “daunting” because of the lagging WiFi connection in Trinity Hall.
Another student in Halls lives just a wall away from a student performing the same course, so the two of them often must connect to the same live lectures at the same time.
“That puts extra strain on the already dubious WiFi connection and means there’s a lot of frozen screens and mangled audio to a point that I would say significantly disrupts the quality of learning,” commented the student.
Students residing in Kavanagh Court, too, have posted complaints about spotty WiFi connections in the resident Facebook chat, some addressed directly to the administration of the accommodation service.
On October 1, computer science student Lakshita Sharmi posted an open letter to Kavanagh Court on Facebook, citing the internet connectivity issues that she claimed she had been facing for about a month already.
She explained: “At this point, filing complaints is not helping the residents. We all know that you [Kavanagh Court administration] are aware about the issue but please figure out some alternate solution in getting this issue resolved at the earliest because we are paying high rents this year and expect the facilities to be nice.”
“Do as required but kindly resolve this as we are not able to attend our classes with internet dropping at random points”, she concluded, exemplifying continuing problems that students face when connecting to lectures via Blackboard or Zoom.
Speaking to Trinity News, Sharmi reported that “while the Kavanagh team was trying to fix the issues from their end”, she was able to update some settings on her own operating system to alleviate some issues. However, she claims that she had to do so in order to “alter [her] settings instead of waiting for them to fix the issue”.
In response to several Facebook threads complaining about WiFi connectivity in Kavanagh Court, team members have responded, referencing the 100mB broadband WiFi that is supplied by Virgin for all residents.
“If you are stuck you can contact Virgin technical support…to log a ticket with the issue”, claimed the Kavanagh representatives.
No word has been given on whether Halls or Kavanagh administration plan to further explore internet connectivity options to assist students whose plans for the school year have been shifted almost entirely online.
All students in the faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (AHSS) have been told that classes are to be conducted entirely remotely until at least November 13. As per government regulations, some laboratories for science courses remain open, but Trinity has been advised to keep in-person contact to a minimum and only perform on-campus classes where essential.
