The University of the Philippines Open University (UPOU) has once again joined the global celebration of Open Education Week (OE Week). This 2022, it was held from 7 to 11 March.
OE Week is an annual event organized by Open Education Global (OEG). It was launched in 2012 as a collaborative and community-built open forum. Through the years, it has become a global platform in raising awareness, highlighting innovations, and sharing achievements on open education. OEG is a global, members based, non-profit organization supporting the development and use of open education around the world.
For this year, UPOU’s massive open online courses (MOOCs) and open educational resources (OERs) were shared on the OE Week website. Daily posts about open education-related activities were posted in UPOU social media accounts during the week-long celebration.
The celebration kicked-off with the sharing of the MOOC on “Scriptwriting for a Video Material,” which opened on 7 March 2022 and is available until 21 March 2022. Other MOOCs are available in Massive Open Distance eLearning (MODeL), UPOU’s official MOOC platform.
On the second day of the celebration, UPOU encouraged everyone to join the Open Educational Resource Advocacy Committee members of the International Council for Open and Distance Education (ICDE) in sharing the favorite OERs and other assets. The ICDE is the leading, global membership organization that works towards bringing accessible, quality education to all through online, open and distance learning. UPOU has been elected as part of the ICDE Board for the period of 2022 – 2025.
UPOU showcased hundreds of its OERs on the third day of the event. The resources are available via UPOU Networks and the UPOU website. As a pioneer in online teaching and learning in the Philippines, UPOU continues the celebration by actively sharing the OERs to the public. The University considers OE Week as a good opportunity for sharing and learning about the latest achievements in open education worldwide.
UPOU’s Kwentong OU: A Video and Multimedia Festival and Competition was featured on 11 March, the last day of the celebration. It is a digital video and multimedia festival and competition, which aims to gather narratives of UPOU students and alumni of their experiences and learnings about open learning, distance education, and e-learning. The entries of the competition are accessible via the UPOU Networks – Multimedia Center Facebook page. Voting period for the People’s Choice Award will run until 23 March 2022.
UPOU has been celebrating the OE Week since 2017. As a leading institution of open learning and distance education in the country, UPOU seeks to provide Filipinos wider access to quality higher education and equip them with the knowledge and skills needed in the digital age. It is mandated to contribute towards upgrading the quality of the educational system of the country and to assist other agencies and institutions in developing open learning and distance education programs.
Sustainable Development Goals
Written by Jaime O. Guimbao
Edited by Myra C. Almodiel and Anna Canas-Llamas