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Across the world, the impact of COVID-19 has necessitated some tough decisions in relation to education. In Cuba, universities have been transforming and adapting their provision in order to be able to develop distance learning in their different programmes, and in order to address social problems. Cuba's starting place for this transformation was very different to that of other countries, experiencing great barriers to distance learning (principally the comparatively low access and high cost of internet services pre-pandemic and the economic restrictions of the US embargo) at the same time as huge advantages (pre-existing participatory structures and localised, flexible higher education). With this in mind, the principal aim of this article is to share the University of Granma's experiences of delivering distance learning in order to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on Cuban university students. In this descriptive account, empirical and statistical data show that students and teachers were, initially, insufficiently prepared to manage the effects of the pandemic on the teaching and learning process, but that educational initiatives put in place throughout Cuban universities' academic structures have enabled the whole university community to use distance learning, across its different modalities and contexts, to face the challenges brought by COVID.

The first years of the twenty-first century saw the introduction of a new mode of higher education in Cuba. Local university centres were set up across the country offering part time study to a range of students previously marginalised from higher education. As well as massively increasing access, this programme created a new kind of teacher -- local professionals teaching part-time alongside their regular employment. Using the personal testimony of students and teachers in rural Granma, this paper examines the role of these teachers, with a particular emphasis on the value of their capacity to offer a pedagogy situated in the workplaces, communities and daily lives of their students.

Across the world, the impact of COVID-19 has necessitated some tough decisions in relation to education. In Cuba, universities have been transforming and adapting their provision in order to be able to develop distance learning in their different programmes, and in order to address social problems. Cuba's starting place for this transformation was very different to that of other countries, experiencing great barriers to distance learning (principally the comparatively low access and high cost of internet services pre-pandemic and the economic restrictions of the US embargo) at the same time as huge advantages (pre-existing participatory structures and localised, flexible higher education). With this in mind, the principal aim of this article is to share the University of Granma's experiences of delivering distance learning in order to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on Cuban university students. In this descriptive account, empirical and statistical data show that students and teachers were, initially, insufficiently prepared to manage the effects of the pandemic on the teaching and learning process, but that educational initiatives put in place throughout Cuban universities' academic structures have enabled the whole university community to use distance learning, across its different modalities and contexts, to face the challenges brought by COVID. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]