“From the sage on the stage, we will now be just the guides on the side, but we will be the architects of learning. We will be the ones to construct and design how our students will learn using the materials that are available to them,” said University of the Philippines Open University (UPOU) Chancellor Melinda dela Peña Bandalaria as she highlights the changing roles of educators in the digital age during the exploratory meeting in Cavite State University (CvSU) on 10 October 2018. Chancellor Bandalaria, along with Asst. Prof. Myra Almodiel and Ms. Shaira Tanay, met with the faculty and staff members of CvSU as part of the UPOU’s Cascading Best Practices Program.
The meeting started with a welcome address from Dr. Camilo Polinga, CvSU Vice President for Academic Affairs, who emphasized the importance of harnessing the availability and power of technology in distance education. Dr. Polinga expressed his gratitude to UPOU for choosing to assist their university in reviving their distance education (DE) programs that have been on hold since 2014. He also encouraged his fellow faculty and staff to use the collaboration between UPOU and CvSU to its full extent to strengthen their open learning college and their delivery of distance education.
Dr. Agnes Nuestro, Dean of Graduate School and Open Learning College of CvSu, also shared a brief history of CvSU’s open learning college, its present status, and their strategic plan to revive the opening of distance education by first semester of AY 2019. Presenting these details are significant in identifying areas where UPOU’s best practices can be cascaded.
The meeting concluded with some final words from Chancellor Bandalaria emphasizing that the collaboration between UPOU and CvSU is a learning venture not just for the faculty and staff of CvSU but also for UPOU. In her final statement, she also casted the vision of the Cascading Best Practices Program in the large picture and that is to be of great value in the development of Distance Education in our country. She said, “What we can do together will help the Philippines to contribute to the knowledge about distance education. We are at the forefront of distance education since the Philippines is the President of Asian Association of Open Universities. It is not just here. The Philippines is the pioneer in the whole Asia, and it is because of these things that we are doing. We are hoping that we could do more through our joint initiatives. That is what we are longing to achieve.”
Cascading Best Practices Program is one component of UPOU’s project on Institutional Innovation that aims to strengthen the program and manpower of UPOU. This development is expected to eventually help the university in capacitating other HEIs and enabling them to offer their programs from technology-enhanced to fully-online mode of instruction.(SFTanay)
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