The University of the Philippines Open University (UPOU) Multimedia Center (MC) conducted the first two sessions of the Multimedia Workshop Series on 21 March 2018 at the Training Room, UPOU Community Hub, UPOU, Los Baños, Laguna. The first session is on UPOU COMMONS, the university's online repository of UPOU-produced Open Educational Resources (OER). While the second session is a lecture-workshop on Zoom, an application for video conferencing.
Dr. Joane Serrano, Director of the Multimedia Center, opened the first session with her talk on UPOU Competency Framework on OER. She discussed that OERs are educational resources that are free and publicly available. They can be copied, used, adapted, re-mixed and re-shared, depending on the creative commons license used. Dr. Serrano discussed the OER development process that integrates the quality assurance framework. She also reiterated that the MC provide Faculty offices and their faculty members not only technical assistance during production but as well as during the development stage of OER. She also highlighted the need for gender specialist and universal accessibility experts to assist in creating an OER in line with the university's thrust on gender fairness and universal accessibility and inclusivity.
Ms. Luisa Gelisan, MC's University Researcher and Program Development Associate (PDA), presented to the participants the UPOU Networks website, its various features, and the content of each feature. The features include UPOU Commons, the repository of the university-produced OER; UPOU Live features livestreams of lectures, seminars and other events; UPOU Mix is the repository of learning materials on various topics; On Record is the repository of UPOU-produced podcasts; and the Featured Program which showcases UPOU program offerings on a bi-weekly basis.
Mr. Edison Sevillo, Information Systems Researcher and developer of the UPOU Networks site, demonstrated how to access the different features and contents of the site. He pointed out categories that can be used to effectively search for a resource available in the UPOU Networks.
The second session was about Zoom, an alternative platform for video conferencing applications such as Google Hangouts, Messenger, and Skype which are commonly used by UPOU faculty and staff. Mr. Sevillo said that Zoom has the ability to accommodate 100 participants in a single video conference; to record web meetings; and to share screens among video conference participants. After the discussion, the participants had a hands-on experience with using Zoom.
The two events were participated in by the faculty members, REPS, administrative staff members and Research Assistants. The first session had 28 participants, while the second session had 38. (MEGonzales)
