By Daniel P. Tapaoan, Jr. 

To upgrade the Mariano Marcos State University’s brand of flexible education, three professors obtained certification from the Texas International Consortium (TIEC) to become flexible learning trainers.

Dr. Byron Joseph Hallar, Dr. Jan Rich Guira, and Dr. Jahnese D. Asuncion can now start to initiate the leveling up of MMSU’s current instructional practices and learning technologies having completed a national training on flexible learning foundations sponsored by TIEC’s International Continuing Professional Education (ICPE). 

Hallar is the university’s distance learning chief; Guira is student affairs and services director; and, Asuncion is the chief for institutional student programs and services. 

Hallar said they are set to transform current flexible classes to be more relevant and innovative, and to make additional high quality flexible learning courses in the university. For this, the group will soon train MMSU faculty and students on said upgrades. 

These interventions are laid out after the three mentors finished the second phase of the training grant which ran from January to May 2022. They were among the 177 faculty administrators from various tertiary schools in the country who were taught on how to build online training programs and evaluate program implementation.

The first phase of the activity ran from October to November 2021, which covered themes on humanizing instruction and minimizing the transactional gap between teachers and students. 

The three MMSU professors also qualified to be part of the only 40 participants who will continue to phases 3 and 4 next year. Topics under phase 3 are course design and development orientation, curriculum analysis, course mapping, designing learning goals and objectives, creating learning activities, fostering learning interactions, online education technologies, development of online assessments, and development of online assessments. Phase 4 will focus on implementation of sustainability of flexible learning program. 

ICPE, also known as the Continuity of Education - eLearning Philippines, aims to develop faculty skills on technology-based instructional delivery, designing high-quality online courses, and evaluating program implementation. It seeks to rollout course shell and student orientation prototypes and to organize train-the-trainer schedules and offerings.

The project, which supports the capacity-building efforts for university-level instructors, faculty and administrators, provides quality professional development to enable successful, engaging and high-quality online instruction.

MMSU President Shirley C. Agrupis thanked the course organizers for the inclusion of MMSU professors in the training grant, saying it complements the university’s commitment to advance flexible education and distance learning as part of realizing academic excellence in MMSU. 

The MMSU representatives qualified in the training grant upon acceptance of their re-entry action plans and through the recommendation of PSCA and Dr. Mee Jay Domingo, director of university’s internationalization, linkages, and partnerships office. 

This TIEC training program was conducted in partnership with the U.S. Embassy and Commission on Higher Education. The partnership responds to pandemic-related challenges faced by Philippine higher education, as part of the yearlong celebration of the 75th anniversary of U.S.-Philippine diplomatic relations. (HLY/JVBT, StratCom)