The COVID-19 pandemic has affected almost all facets of our lives including how we access services in the areas of health, entertainment, commerce, and even education. The pandemic has drastically disrupted education affecting millions of learners all over the world. Schools/universities were forced to embrace remote learning to ensure that knowledge-sharing continues amidst the global fight against the COVID-19.

Unfortunately, majority of the country’s public-school teachers were trained and only have experience in conventional or face-to-face mode of instructional delivery. Hence the need to conduct rapid and massive training to prepare educators for the academic year.

Together with University of the Philippines Open University, 84,632 total participants (56,242 or 66% of this were female) were enlightened on various techniques for remote teaching through the free 9-session program. The series came at no cost to the government and the teacher-participants as it was conducted online through synchronous webinar sessions. Certification of training completion was released to participants who passed the learning assessment for each topic. One topic deemed critical to the preparations of the teachers, the Course Materials Preparation for Remote Teaching and Learning, was also offered as Massive Open Online Course to provide an online guided workshop to the participants.

https://www.facebook.com/dict.mc1

• Philippines

• Older persons
• Women
• People with disabilities
• Remote and rural communities
• educators

There are millions of educators in the country from public to private and primary to higher education sector. The project can be replicated in other regions, in partnership with other schools, universities, and colleges, to ensure continuous learning and uninterrupted education systems even in times of crisis. The training materials/video lectures were made available as open access materials which can provide content or serve as template for other training programs.

The training design makes use of Internet as the venue for training and learning, on-demand sessions are available and accessible anytime at DICT MC1’s Facebook page (www.facebook.com/dict.mc1) for those who would need or want to study the topics - a model for continuing education or lifelong learning which is critical especially among educators. Since the training materials had been released as Open Educational Resources through the DICT’s repository, continuous use can be assured.

The free training has equipped educators with knowledge on technologies useful for remote teaching that rely heavily on available ICT solutions, whether offline or online. The initiative encourages the harnessing of existing, innovative, ICT-powered resources to provide unhampered education to students. By bridging educators to a plethora of learning opportunities tailored to their needs and in context of Philippine academic system, the project has promoted all-inclusive access to and contribution of ICT contents.