Organization

Biliran Province State University

Best Practice Focus Area/s

Leadership, Strategy, Operations

Year Implemented

March 2020

This is a GBPR entry

Summary

BiPSU FLMS manifests the university’s commitment to ensuring that no BiPSUnista (BiPSU students and employees) will be left behind. Guided by this, the university has adapted flexible strategies to continue its operation, such as the development of an institutional Learning Management System dubbed as WoW BiPSU Learning Management System, the establishment of municipal kiosks in strategic places in the municipalities, and the provision of facilities for the learning centers to support students needs, and partnership with LGUs and other agencies and among others.

The FL implementation played a vital role in delivering instruction. It paved the way for the continued delivery of its other essential services for the university, such as student information, enrollment, admission, etc. To support this, various orientations and training were initiated to ensure that all our employees, especially those in the teaching workforce, are well-equipped.

Background and Problem

In a survey conducted by the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) last May 11 on Flexible Learning among Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), results showed that 81% of the HEIs in the Philippines are currently using flexible learning strategies; however, only 58.5% of them have institutional academic policies for its implementation. It also showed that more than half (59.4%) of the HEIs who responded did not have learning packages/coursewares designed for flexible learning. Still, more than half (57.7%) of the HEIs currently do not have access to e-library and online educational resources (OERs). These results reflect that in implementing the flexible learning system, which is the call of the time, HEIs need to equip themselves and their faculty and administrators to effectively and efficiently implement it.

Because of COVID-19, the promise to deliver quality education in the Philippines is severely hampered. BiPSU’s FLMS is a response to the constitutional right to quality education.

This system seeks to address the needs of its personnel in terms of training and capability building, especially since the institution will implement a new teaching delivery mode. This causes massive orientation and training on flexible/blended learning, course packs/modules and other instructional materials production, orientation and reorientation on the alternative learning management system, and many others.

Solution and Impact

The university adopted a unified policy for preparing, implementing, and monitoring the sustainable, flexible learning management system through careful planning and consultation with its stakeholders. The results of consultations have been instrumental in crafting the university’s Learning Continuity Plan, which also reflects the Flexible Learning System practices of the university.

Designed towards the achievement of quality education amidst the pandemic, the BiPSU FL system implementation included the following activities:

  1. Identification of recurring problems in the delivery of instruction in the institution and conduct of needs assessment for training/ capability building activities, as well as consultation among faculty members and students;
  2. Development of different programs designed to address the needs of the faculty and non-teaching personnel in terms of content development, IT and infra support, policy development, flexible learning foundations, etc.
  3. Implementation of different programs and activities in the university
  4. On-boarding of all teaching personnel and students from the member SUCs
  5. Development of instructional materials for flexible learning by the well-trained teachers
  6. Establishment of LGU-academic linkages
  7. Sustained delivery of instruction through flexible learning delivery
  8. Monitoring and Assessment of different activities under the FL Management System Implementation of BiPSU

Further, the different training and capability-building activities have helped all the faculty members across schools and departments with flexible learning delivery in education and have become very instrumental in the production and development of learning materials for students. This also enabled them to adapt varied teaching strategies to address students’ needs, such as using the Learning Management System (LMS).

Milestones/Next Steps

The different programs and activities initiated by the university paved the way for implementing a flexible learning system in the institution. Among the notable results and remarkable milestones of the institution relative to the flexible learning management system includes the conduct of over forty (40) webinars for all the faculty members in the region, which cover the topic of Orientation on Flexible and Distance Learning, Learning Management System (LMS), Module Production, Student-On-Boarding Program, etc.; establishment of academic/LGU kiosks in the different municipalities in the province and neighboring towns in Leyte, which served as repositories of learning materials for students.

This also paved the way for establishing partnerships and linkages among the different Local Government Units in the region and; the design of an institutional Learning Management System, the first in the region, used in the flexible learning delivery. The said LMS is an open-source platform that can be used online and offline. They describe it to be reliable, sustainable, and cost-effective; production of print and online modules for all subjects in all programs for the first (1st) semester of the academic year 2020-2021; and development of the different tools/instruments for evaluation and monitoring of the different flexible learning programs of the consortium.