Page 178 - Open and Distance Education In Asia : Good Practice From AAOU Members

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

that the target learners were limited, number of learners who were able to
still, this course can be considered as take the final examination.
the beginning of the University’s journey • In 2012, a series of Round Table
towards openness. That experience also Discussions focusing on UPOU’s openness
provided an overview of the attrition (or the lack of it) was conducted (Arinto,
rate in a free online course which was 2013). It was both a reflection of the
observed to be significantly higher than university’s initiatives and concretization
the credit online courses that the UPOU of openness as well as a search for the
was offering at that time. direction that the university can take
• In 2007, an open online course “Computer relevant to its mandate. Resource
Ethics” was offered by the Faculty of person within and outside the University
Information and Communication Studies of the Philippines System were invited to
(FICS) of UPOU with the Cyber Corridor share insights on the different aspects of
Employees or those working in the open education.
IT sector as the target learners. The • In 2012, the uLearn project was
module was part of the “Online Bridging implemented which became the driver
Program” (OBP) that UPOU planned to for the conceptualization, development,
offer. There were two other modules and offering of the open online courses
in the program: the “Social Impacts of at the university adopting the framework
ICT” and “Intellectual Property Rights” of the Massive Open Online Courses
but these modules were not offered (MOOCs) which was popular at that
due to lack of funding. The openness time. Through this project, the first
integrated into the initiative included open online course in the configuration
open learning schedule since it did not of MOOC was offered in July 2013 under
follow the usual semestral schedule. the partnership of UPOU and one of the
The learner can enroll anytime and may leading mobile service providers of the
complete the program at his/her own country, SMART Telecommunications.
pace anytime between three months to The MOOC was titled “Introduction to
one year on a part time basis. Sessions Android App Development” and the LMS
were asynchronous and the student can used was called @ral which was powered
log into the course site anytime of the by moodle. This initiative became the
day or any day of the week. Further, the pioneering work by UPOU on open
learner may take the assessment tests at education as articulated by Bates (2015)
his/her own chosen time. In this offering, and also served as a template which
a total of 100 students registered for the shaped the succeeding offerings of
course with support coming from the MOOCs by the university. The template
Commission on Higher Education (CHED) has the following features: use of OERs,
(Flor, 2007). A very useful insight from as much as possible those developed by
this initiative was on the open-ended the University, to provide the content of
schedule of the course with just a small the course; use of open platform for its

University of the Philippines Open University (UPOU)