The University of the Philippines Open University (UPOU) Chancellor, Dr. Melinda dela Pena Bandalaria, led the delegation of nine UPOU faculty and staff members in the first MoodleMoot Philippines held on 26-27 April 2018 at the Manila Hotel.
Dr. Bandalaria, served as one of the plenary speakers. She shared her experiences in the implementation of different Moodle instances at UPOU such as MyPortal and Massive Open Distance e-Learning (MODeL), which help fulfill the mandate of the university, “to democratize access to quality higher education in the country“. She spoke alongside Ms. Bianca Luna, Research Associate and Content Writer from TESDA, and Mr. Wilben Pagtaconan from Philippine e-Learning Society. Dr. Bandalaria was also in an interview with the Moodle founder, Dr. Martin Dougiamas.
In a breakout session, Assistant Professor Al Francis Librero, Assistant Professor Roel Cantada, Assistant Professor Reinald Adrian Pugoy, and Juan Paulo Bañares, faculty members and research staff from UPOU, shared their knowledge and studies in using the platform. Other participants from UPOU were Dr. Melinda Lumanta, Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs; Dr. Alexander Flor, Dean of the Faculty of Information and Communication Studies (FICS) and the Session Chair of the event; Assistant Professor Myra Almodiel, Assistant to the Chancellor; and Assistant Professor Joyce Manalo, FICS Faculty Secretary.
MoodleMoot PH also featured Stuart Mealor, a Moodle partner in New Zealand, who talked about the journey of Moodle so far. The founder and CEO of Moodle, Dr. Martin Dougiamas also discussed the need to improve the learning platform and emphasized the importance of meetups like MoodleMoot to help in the development of the technology. Atty. JJ Disini and Atty. Michael Vernon Guerrero discussed about Data Privacy act and GNU Public License, respectively.
MoodleMoot is a conference held in different countries for dedicated users, developers, and administrators of Moodle, a popular open-source Learning Management System (LMS) designed to help educators create effective online courses. The conference, which was organized by Nephila Web Technology Inc. aims to facilitate the sharing of knowledge and best practices in using the open-source learning platform. (JPBanares)
