Blended Learning
Last Wednesday, I took a taxi to the airport from the Development Academy of the Philippines; I was part of a panel that commented on a research into farmer beneficiaries in the banana plantations.
Waiting for me at the Centennial airport was Franklin Quijano, former mayor of Iligan City. We flew together to Cebu, to speak at the convention of ISD ( institutional services department ) managers of electric coops.
During the Thursday sessions, Fr. Paking Silva used the format of round table discussions, in small groups and in plenary. Although the groups were given specific questions to discuss, they were also given freedom to raise other questions in the plenary.
It was not quite the “open space” approach that Franklin uses in other workshops, but it partook of the same spirit of allowing the participants to choose their agenda.
One of the questions that came up was about continuing education opportunities for department managers. There is an ongoing program for general managers, designed by a group of Ateneo professors in partnership with NEA. “Will we get to join the same program?” one ISD manager asked.
The initial and frank answer was “No.” That program is rather expensive and customised for general managers. A big part of the expense was the board and lodging for three residential sessions that lasted a week each.
“But of course the department managers need continuing education, especially since the policy environment is changing due to EPIRA,” the NEA representative said. “We just need to customize it too.” And since there are at least three department managers for every GM, the electric coops cannot afford the same cost as that of the GM course multiplied by three.
When asked for my comments, I shared with them ELF’s successful experience in developing a distance learning program for grassroots leaders. Our leadership formation program started out with only residential courses, lasting for six weeks. Even though the venues we rented were much cheaper than those used for the GMs, the board and lodging costs were still huge.
We obviously couldn’t use the same expensive method for the continuing education of the grassroots leader-graduates. That led us to explore distance learning.
Based on the positive results, we later redesigned our whole leadership formation program. Instead of starting with a six-week residential course, followed by distance learning, we had shorter ( one week ) residential courses at the beginning, middle and end of the program, combined with distance learning in between the “face to face” sessions. The participants studied individually and also met in smaller learning groups in their communities. The whole program stretched over six months.
“That’s what we call blended learning,” Gil de los Reyes told me last Monday at his Makati office. He is a former undersecretary of DAR, and we met by chance in Baguio during my visit a few weeks back. He invited me to visit his office to talk about his e-learning programs on climate change and international trade. His courses are geared to corporate and government participants, but he wants us to explore how e-learning courses can be developed for grassroots community leaders.
We agreed that pure e-learning won’t work for the grassroots. In fact, it is not advisable either for professionals. There are topics that are still best learned face to face, over longer sessions, with the help of resource persons and peer discussions. Hence “blended learning.”
Part of the reason for the distance learning part of blended learning is scale and costs. Even if board and lodging costs are high, if there are only a few target participants e.g. the GMs of 119 electric coops, residential courses may be affordable. But the courses couldn’t last too long, since the GMs cannot be away from their work.
The calculations change if there are a couple of hundred department managers. And even more, if we want a program for barangay leaders.
Think of the following numbers: There are 42,000 barangays, and there are 9 elected leaders ( the barangay captain, seven barangay councilors, and the chair of the Sangguniang Kabataan). Add three appointed members of the Barangay Development Council, since by law they should be at least 25% of the BDC. Thats 12 formal leaders in every barangay, or over 500,000.
A purely residential course may be possible for the initial sessions, but for subsequent and continuing education, we need a combination of face to face and distance learning – a blended learning program.
Beyond cost and time considerations, blended learning, especially the distance learning part, puts more responsibility on the learners for their learning. There is still need for external reinforcement, in the form of learning groups sessions and having a learning coordinator, but a lot depends on the internal motivation and discipline of the learner. That is why distance learning is also described as “autonomous learning” and “self-directed learning.”
I had to fly back early Friday morning, to be present at the meeting of the National EFA Committee. But at breakfast, just before I left, Jun Pan of NEA and I agreed to work on such a blended learning program for the department managers of the electric coops.
That could also be a stepping stone to developing a blended learning program for grassroots community leaders, at least in rural barangays, since they are also member-consumers of the electric cooperatives.
