Part Two
POISED against the sky, the Oblation sculpture of the University of the Philippines Open University (UPOU) in Los Baños, Laguna, casts an arresting figure with its ribbon-like flag swirling around its pedestal. Designed and executed by university artist and
former UPOU Chancellor Grace J. Alfonso, the swirling flag is said to be symbolic of the UPOU’s lifting education to greater heights by widening access to UP quality education.
It takes about an hour and 58 minutes to travel from Manila to the UPOU center in Barangay Maahas, Los Baños, Laguna. But that’s if one wants to see the campus up close and get to see its facilities or talk to the faculty. One can also access any search engine and type https://our.upou.edu.ph/ on the Internet to get to the UPOU web site.
From there, anyone can inquire about admission, registration, enrollment schedules, degree programs and other pertinent data that students may want to know about the UPOU.
Established on February 23, 1995, the UPOU is the fifth of seven constituent campuses that make up the UP System, which includes UP Diliman, UP Los Baños, UP Baguio, UP Manila, UP Visayas and UP Mindanao.
Current UPOU Chancellor Melinda de la Peña-Bandalaria said the other UP constituent campuses can only take a small portion of qualified students every year. “The resources, like classrooms, teachers, dorms, etc., are the limiting factors in terms of the number of
students [that] UP can take.”
She added that these constraints are no longer relevant in a distance education institution like UPOU.
Bandalaria also noted that “UPOU’s mode of instructional delivery provides an opportunity for the many experts in UP to expand their reach by teaching courses in the DE [distance education] mode of instruction.”
Online classes
At UPOU, classes are held online through a learning management system, or LMS (myportal.upou.edu.ph). Online interactions can be done in two ways: Synchronously and asynchronously.
The first interactions are those that require students and instructors to be online at the same time. These are during online lectures, discussions and presentations that occur at a specific hour.
Interactions done asynchronously refer to online courses that one can take at one’s own schedule. Synchronous interactions can be done using Skype.
According to Bandalaria, study guides and course modules or lessons are uploaded in the online course site and this is what the students access. Accessing the site can be likened to attending a class in a classroom.
Since in most cases, interactions are done asynchronously, there’s no set schedule as to when the teacher and students access the course site.
Both teachers and students access the course site and participate in learning activities at their own time and pace, although there are also schedules and deadlines to consider.
Bandalaria said there are also assignments, exams, class reporting, etc., just like in a conventional study setting.
“The modern [technology that we have] now [and are] available [to us] make all these possible,” she said. “So there’s no such thing as a typical day—but more of the essentials which constitute the learning design and which should be present in the online courses.”
But according to Bandalaria, “the learning design will, however, depend on the learning goals.”
The UPOU has 34 full-time faculty members. It also has other teaching staff from other UP units (affiliate faculty), other universities (adjunct faculty) and from the industry (lecturers).
“Given this mechanism, I can say the UPOU can get the best when it comes to its teaching pool,” Bandalaria said.
Bandalaria, the 56-year-old current president of the prestigious Asian Association of Open Universities, has more than 20 years of experience in open and distance learning (ODL) instruction, research and administration.
She teaches 10 graduate and undergraduate courses in the distance e-learning mode and is involved in 20 major research activities either as “research leader” or “coresearcher.”
“I look at online teaching [and learning] as really empowering,” Bandalaria said. “I can attend to various functions and tasks and it will not, in any way, affect my teaching assignments, as I can still teach wherever I am as long as I have access to the Internet.”
She cited her own experience as example.
“We held an almost weeklong conference during the last week of October and after that I spent another week in Bali [Indonesia] to attend a workshop for online learning and, still, I performed my teaching functions.”
Bandalaria added that UPOU’s mode of instructional delivery itself can be considered as public service, as it aims to reach the underserved areas and sectors of the society.
Funding
THE UPOU can get additional research funding from the UP System, the Comission on Higher Education and the Department of Science and Technology.
Other funding agencies and organizations that have provided funding support for UPOU include the Asian Development Bank, Unicef Philippines and the International Development Research Council and Quezon Power (Philippines) among others.
The UPOU also partners with local government units to provide scholarship program for the public school teachers in their area.
Business, through their corporate social responsibility initiatives, can provide support to the different programs and initiatives of the UPOU.
Degree, nondegree
THE UPOU offers three undergraduate programs: Associate in Arts, Bachelor of Arts in Multimedia Studies and Bachelor of Education Studies. It has 14 masters’ degree
programs in various fields and doctoral programs in education. Still, more than the degree programs, UPOU also offers nonformal courses and certificate programs.
“Some of the UPOU courses are similar to those offered by other UP units with the mode of delivery as the only difference,” Bandalaria said. “Programs and courses are distinct from the other courses offered by other UP units to take advantage of the expertise in the substantive areas in this mode of delivery.”
People from various persuasions come to the UPOU.
“I would consider all our graduates outstanding, as it takes so much self-discipline and sense of responsibility to be able to finish a degree through the online mode,” Bandalaria said. Some of the known personalities that were able to acquire degrees via the UPOU include former Vice-President Jejomar Binay (Diploma in Environment and Natural Resources Management), Sen. Miguel Zubiri (Master in Environment and Natural Resources Management), Richard Gomez (Associate in Arts) and Miss Earth Catherine Untalan (Diploma and Masters in Environment and Natural Resources Management).
She added that interested individuals can access the UPOU web site (www.upou.edu.ph) for detailed instructions on application for admission. “They can accomplish the application form online and the documents, which they need to submit are listed in the form [https://our.upou.edu.ph/index.php?radio=admission].”
Commitment
IT takes persistence and solid determination to finish a course or degree program at UPOU. Figures supplied by the UPOU showed that only 326 students graduated from some 15,959 undergraduate students enrolled between 1995 to 2016.
The records for persistence to complete a degree in the other programs showed a similar trend—Masters graduates (1,389 out of 39,894), Doctorate graduates (54 out of 4,167).
Not including nondegree students and cross-enrollees, the total number of graduates of UPOU from 1995-2016 are 4,698 out of 84,807.
Bandalaria explained, however, that “the number of total enrollees is not for unique individuals.”
“Those are course enrollments, while graduation is for unique individuals, meaning an individual can enroll from a range of one to five courses as in the case of our undergraduate students,” she added. “Therefore, the individual will be counted depending on the number of courses enrolled.”
To be concluded