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Case Study

Philippines

University of the Philippines Open University

Prepared by: P. Eulalia;L. Saplala;

Brief description of the programme

The University of the Philippines Open University (upou) is one of six autonomous units of the University of the Philippines system. All the other autonomous units operate in the residential mode; the upou alone of the six units is mandated to be the open and distance education institution of the University of the Philippines system. It has its own set of officials headed by a chancellor and it has its own budget.

Unlike the other autonomous units, however, it does not have its own faculty. Recognising the rich human resources of the University of the Philippines system, the University of the Philippines Board of Regents in its resolution establishing the University of the Philippines Open University on February 23, 1995, directed the upou to draw from the expertise and experience of the University of the Philippines faculty in all the autonomous units.

In each of the autonomous units of the up system, the upou has set up a School for Distance Education headed by a dean. The deans work very closely with the autonomous units, where they are located to develop programmes and courses to be delivered by distance mode by the upou. To guide the faculty in developing the course materials for the programmes, the Office of Academic Support and Instructional Services (oasis) was established under the Office of the Vice-Chancellor for Academic Affairs.

Delivery of instruction is administered by the Office of the Vice-Chancellor for Student Support Services. The upou operates its distance education programmes through learning centres distributed throughout the country. These centres are located either in a up campus or in a non-up institution, including other state universities and colleges, high schools, or even in government offices which are willing to work with the upou as co-operating institutions. Each learning centre is under the charge of a local co-ordinator who works part-time for the upou, as do the locally hired tutors who may be members of the faculty of the co-operating institution.

While autonomous, the upou is not a stand-alone institution since it works very closely with the faculty of the other autonomous units, both in programme and course development and in the delivery of instruction.

The University of the Philippines plays a critical role in national development, particularly in the improvement of the quality of the country’s human resources and the ability to bring about technological changes that would make for a globally competitive economy. However, the University of the Philippine’s instructional output has been limited by the bounds of conventional instructional modes. The upou can play a significant role in increasing this output by developing open and distance education programmes which employ modern communication technology for their delivery. These programmes are expected to overcome barriers to access to higher education brought about by geographical constraints, family and work-related responsibilities, and the rigid structures of conventional education.

Only two years old this year 1997, the upou now offers eight diploma programmes, six masters’ programmes, and one Ph.D. programme. It is developing an undergraduate programme, an associate in arts. It operates 20 learning centres in the country and one abroad, and will set up several more this year in the Philippines, and possibly another one abroad. While employing less than 70 full-time staff, the upou has a wider reach in the country than any other educational institution, including the other autonomous units of the University of the Philippines system.

Academic programmes

Academic programmes of upou offered in collaboration with the different units of the autonomous universities are set out in the following table.

Programme

Collaborator

Diploma in Science Teaching

College of Arts and Sciences,
UP Los Banos

Diploma in Agriculture

College of Agriculture, UP Los Banos

Diploma in Research and Development Management

College of Economics and Management, UP Los Banos

Diploma or Master of Social Work

College of Social Work and Community Development, UP Diliman

Diploma or Master in Language Studies Education

College of Education, UP Diliman

Diploma or Master in Social Studies Education

College of Education, UP Diliman

Diploma in Mathematics Teaching

College of Arts and Sciences,
UP Los Banos

Diploma in Computer Science

College of Arts and Sciences,
UP Los Banos

Master in Public Health

College of Public Health, UP Manila

Master of Hospital Administration

College of Public Health, UP Manila

Master of Arts in Nursing

College of Nursing, UP Manila

Ph.D. in Education

College of Education, UP Diliman

Problems encountered

Planning and managing distance education

Since the upou does not have its own faculty, it must win the support

and co-operation of the faculties in the different autonomous units.

Because these faculties carry the full load of work in their own autonomous units,

work for the upou may not be their priority.

It is important to be able to identify the right co-operating institution where the

learning centre is to be located.

Since a local co-ordinator and local tutors will be hired for student support,

care must be taken in choosing the right people who will work with the upou

in meeting its objectives.

Implementing quality assurance

upou designates a quality circle course writing team.

Finding the best teacher who alsoknows how to write modules

for distance education may be a problem.

It is not easy to find the other members of the course writing team such as

the instructional designer, the reader, the editor, and so on, who possess

both the qualifications and the time to devote to the development

of course materials.

The other aspect of quality assurance is in the delivery of instruction.

Our students go to the learning centres about once a month,

or about four times in a term to attend study sessions, submit assignments,

and sit for examinations.

The success of these study sessions depends upon the competence of the tutors.

When they are hired, they undergo training in the art of facilitating study sessions

and in the content of the course that they will facilitate.

While tutors are hired on the strength of their background in the area in which

they serve as tutors, there is no guarantee that they will live up to expectations.

Using and integrating media in distance education

Print is the major medium in the upou’s distance education courses. However, the

university has begun to develop courses for on-line offering using the Internet,

and video lessons for broadcast

(having obtained a time slot in a major television channel),

or for learning centres.

The cost in terms of staffing requirements, equipment,

and other production aspects is very high.

Video conferencing, for example, is very expensive.

High costs will continue to be a limiting factor in the use of technology.

The plus factor in the use of technology is that, as in the case of television,

its audience reach is very wide.

The upou would be serving not only its own students, it would be helping to bring

educational programmes into the homes of many Filipinos.

Instructional design and production for distance education

The training of the faculty in course development is a continuing programme

of the upou,but it has a limited number of people competent enough

to handle the training programmes and to shepherd the faculty through

the difficult task of writing course materials.

but when the number of students and the number of programmes increase,

as they increase every year, the upou, with its limited funds,

will have to find ways of coping with the volume of work.

Learning support systems

The lack of a communication system linking the learning centres

with the upou offices hampers the efficient delivery of student support.

An audio conferencing system will soon be installed

but it will not yet cover all the learning centres.

A telephone network toinclude Internet use is being designed in co-operation

with a private service provider.

There is an acute need for library resources.

Orders for foreign publications take weeks, maybe even months to arrive.

Of course funding is a problem because upou must provide library resources

not to one or two centres but to 20 or later 30 or perhaps even 50 centres.

With the lack of communication facilities, faculty or tutors are not

ithin easy reach of the students.

To meet a tutor, students must go to the learning centre, which may not be close

to home and will require the student to travel some distance.

While counselling services are available, they are on a very limited scale.

Aside from the lack of communication facilities, the tutors and

even the learning centre co-ordinator serve onlyon a part-time basis and

have a limited time to serve the students.

The most important issue: Planning and managing distance education

Because of its unique structure in the University of the Philippines system, the upou is autonomous but at the same time must work very closely with each of the other autonomous units. Administratively, this situation may give rise to rather complex procedures. Papers must be routed not only through one set of officials within an autonomous unit but as well through the other autonomous unit whose faculty are involved in distance education programmes.

The upou finds itself therefore involved with five other sets of officials in addition to its own officials, which can become very complicated. Programmes must be approved in the autonomous unit from which they originate, and then go through the upou machinery. The same is true of appointments of course writers, appointments to course teams, and appointments as faculty-in-charge of courses offered by the upou; even the offering of courses must be synchronised with the autonomous unit colleges since faculty credit load must be cleared with their deans.

Undoubtedly, the upou has increased the workload of the faculty in the residential colleges by adding distance education responsibilities. Conflict therefore may arise in terms of which takes priority: work for the mother unit (the residential college), or work for the upou. While the faculty may be willing to put in their time for upou responsibilities, their administrators may believe otherwise and require that the mother units have first priority. When this happens, the upou of course finds itself in a difficult situation accomplishing the task to be done.

Solutions

Several approaches have been initiated to address the situation.

To remove the issue of ownership of programmes and

therefore of who can or should initiate any action with regard to programmes,

the upou is embarking on using a different approach to programme and

course development. upou will take a proactive stance and

take the lead within and outside of the University of the Philippines system, and

will seek to include those who have retired from active service in the university

to help develop the programmes and instructional materials.

Since serving in the programmes of the upou increases the load of the faculty

in the other units, the upou must help the colleges of these units with funds to

allow them to hire additional faculty for better distribution of workload.

upou will start to hire its own faculty to serve as a core faculty for

each programme. It will then have full-time academics to run its programme.