Building global learning communities

MANILA, Philippines – “We are now focusing on building global learning communities,” UP Open University (UPOU) Chancellor Grace Javier Alfonso declared during the Sub-regional Forum on Open and Distance Learning (ODL) held recently at the UPOU Headquarters in Los Baños, Laguna.

The forum was the centerpiece of UPOU’s 14th anniversary celebration and featured five member institutions of the Asian Association of Open Universities who exchanged experiences in managing and implementing distance education programs.

The UPOU community is indeed global. It currently has 2,000 students in 46 countries. In strengthening the foundation of its global learning community, UPOU serves its learners better by enhancing existing programs and creating new ones.

It employs Web 2.0 technologies in course delivery, makes use of interactive course materials, and develops podcasts and multimedia learning materials of lectures by transnational intellectuals and scholars. The Centennial Center for Digital Learning, which was inaugurated a day before the forum, was also established with a strong research agenda that include studies on the use of distance education technologies and learning methodologies.

UPOU plans to organize distance education practitioners/scholars into professional associations in the emerging fields of multimedia design, new media, learning objects production for the Web and to create a strong association of e-librarians, e-curators, and e-scholars to help develop academic standards for e-learning materials.

It is helping to build an accreditation system that will raise the standards of e-learning and ODL in the country and is involved in exploring new areas of research. It aims to strengthen the continuing education program and to develop an academic journal of distance education.

To accomplish all of these, UPOU needs to build up its IT infrastructure; expand its learning management system by integrating short messaging service to have more connectivity, interactivity, and ubiquity; and institute a social scholarly network. The last involves a platform similar to social networks such as Friendster and Facebook but designed for a teaching, learning, and research community.

Alfonso traced UPOU’s history and enumerated the various phases that it has gone through to become what it is today. When it was established in 1995, UPOU courses were mirror images of residential programs, experts created learning materials in traditional media, with print as the dominant medium, supplemented by radio and television.

During the second phase, UPOU led the way in delivering quality education through ODL and was declared the National Center of Excellence in ODL by the Commission on Higher Education. UPOU also opened its first learning center in Hong Kong.

The third phase involved “bridging the digital divide.” UPOU employed the use of the Internet in course delivery and tutorials; employed the integrated virtual learning environment (IVLE) as a learning platform; and built support systems for e-Learning such as the e-library and I-library. UPOU was named the National e-Learning Competency Center by the Commission on Information and Communications Technology.

The next phase saw UPOU migrating from IVLE to MOODLE as a learning platform. It also trained teachers and learners in Web-enhanced teaching and learning. Digital course materials were developed in multimedia, hypertext, hypermedia, and hypermultimedia. UPOU also increased the number of its overseas students. And now, its thrust is toward building global learning communities.

Other speakers in the sub-regional forum who discussed ODL experiences in their respective countries were Dr. Pranee Sungkatavat, president of Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University (STOU), Thailand; Dr. Atwi Suparman, rector of Universitas Terbuka, Indonesia; Dr. Rosli Bin Hamir, vice president for learner management and campus development of the Open University of Malaysia (OUM); and Dr. Pham Minh Viet, president of Hanoi Open University, Vietnam and Dr. Tran Duc Vuong, the director of its Center for R&D in Distance Education.