Page 168 - Open and Distance Education In Asia : Good Practice From AAOU Members

148 OPEN AND DISTANCE EDUCATON IN ASIA
Good Practices from AAOU Members

3. This author also has a personal account of attempting to take a course at ICS after seeing
its advertisements in the Philippine popular reading materials. Most of the courses
advertised were short courses and more on the technical vocational category (Bandalaria,
2019).

Figure 1
Printed matter cover from the Commonwealth of the Philippines to ICS, Scranton PA USA
postmarked 18 December 1907

(https://www.ebay.com/itm/133982577518?chn=ps&mkevt=1&mkcid=28)

Another important contribution to the which became the major player in DE in the
establishment of the DE in the country is the country henceforth. UPOU is a Constituent
Science Teaching Using Distance Instruction Unit of the only national university in the
(STUDI) which was implemented in 1984 by country, the University of the Philippines (UP)
the University of the Philippines Los Banos. with the mandate of democratizing access
The goal was to address the lack of training to quality education through this mode of
of science teachers, a problem identified instruction.
through a survey conducted by the then
National Science and Technology Authority The other government-funded open
(now Department of Science and Technology); university was also established in the
by making available opportunities for “longer- Philippines during the 1990s: the Polytechnic
term training for teachers without requiring University of the Philippines Open University
them to go on an extended leaves of absence” (PUP-OU), a government-funded university,
(Librero, 2015). This initiative eventually led which was established in 1990 (https://web.
to the establishment of the University of the archive.org/web/20150418114240/http://
Philippines Open University (UPOU) in 1995, www.pup.edu.ph/OU/profile.aspx). The

University of the Philippines Open University (UPOU)