SBC-Alabang, Yapster renew ties

The Computer Arts and Sciences-IT Department of San Beda College-Alabang (formerly St. Benedict) has renewed its commitment with premier e-learning solutions provider Yapster e-Learning Inc. to ensure that its thrust is consistently geared toward the delivery of effective IT training to its students.

The partnership was sealed in a formal signing led by SBC rector/president Rev. Fr. Anscar Chupungco, OSB, and Arlene Yap, Yapster chief executive officer, in the presence of Thelma Geraldine Baricaua and Luisito Padolina, vice president and CAS dean, and vice dean, respectively; and Vedasto Baluyot, SBC-IT chairman and e-learning services project manager.

"We’re glad that through this partnership we will be able to assist SBC in making a contribution to the demands of IT training in the country," Yap said.

Under the renewed partnership, Yapster will provide SBC with a new and better learning management system that will deliver, track and administer learning processes which use Web-based IT courses.

The key features of the new learning management system include personal homepage, course catalog management, user and organization management, instructor and administrator review functions, news and announcements posting, use of reference resources (such as PowerPoint, Word and Excel), and a built-in e-mail system.

With all these new features, Miguel Baltazar and Michael Dorado, Yapster implementation consultants, conducted a one-day orientation, basically to equip IT instructors and e-learning administrators with a functional knowledge of the navigational use of the LMS and IT courses.

"The new LMS, which promises to give students and instructors liberty to conduct good collaborative teaching and learning practices, is our attempt to allow e-learning services in SBC to evolve and continue to provide better services to the students, thus ensuring that the competence of our IT graduates is responsive to the current needs of the industry," Baluyot said.

An integral part of the services is a regular implementation monitoring through classroom observations and teacher conferences.

This will enable the school to ascertain that the program is being implemented in line with its academic goals.

"We envision this endeavor to be the benchmark of IT instructions in SBC," Fr. Chupungco said.

SBC-Alabang has partnered with Yapster e-Learning Inc. for three years, and they will closely work together to improve the delivery of training systems.