The impact of COVID-19 on a Philippine university: Challenges and responses towards a new normal in education

Abstract

The current COVID-19 pandemic which was initially reported to have occurred on December 2019 in Wuhan, China has affected many countries and disrupted how people function in their daily lives. Beyond its impact on health and business, the COVID-19 pandemic greatly affected educational systems across the globe. For instance, the World Bank reported on April 2020 that more than 160 countries have mandated temporary closures of schools affecting more than 1 billion learners (World Bank, 2020). A global survey research by the International Association of Universities (IAU, 2020) reported that almost all higher education institutions (HEIs) from the 109 countries which participated in the survey responded that their operations were affected by the pandemic, including teaching and learning. In the same report, results indicated that two-thirds of the participating HEIs reported that face-to-face classroom learning was replaced by distance learning. In a national survey conducted by the American Council on Education (ACE) with college and university presidents in the United States, the following were considered as the most pressing issues: "enrollment numbers, future financial viability, sustaining an online learning environment, laying off of faculty and/or staff, and mental health of students" (ACE, 2020, p.1). In a special issue of Higher Education in Southeast Asia and Beyond (HESB), the impact of COVID-19 on HEIs in Asian countries like China, South Korea, India, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, and Vietnam were discussed. These include discussions on the impact of the pandemic on global student mobility, student assessment, and educational policies, among others (HESB, 2020). In the Philippines, the COVID-19 pandemic necessitated the need to impose various levels of community quarantines across the country. With the enactment of RA 11469 (2020), otherwise known as the Bayanihan to Heal as One Act, the Philippine Government, through its Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Disease (IATF) has set community quarantine guidelines to cushion the impact of COVID-19 pandemic in the country (IATF, 2020). The quarantine includes strict implementation of safety and health protocols such as physical and social distancing, and closure of non-essential businesses/establishments and schools. The restrictions of the community quarantine and the continuing threat of the pandemic on Filipinos' health and security resulted in the need to delay the opening of all public basic education schools for about four months, whereas some public and private HEIs delayed their opening of classes to various dates. For both basic education and higher education institutions, the shift to flexible learning delivery was mandated by the Philippine Department of Education and Commission on Higher Education (CHED) as face-to-face learning was prohibited by the Philippine government. The imperative to shift to a new learning delivery mode came from CHED which instructed Philippine HEIs to open their classes in August, but regular face-to-face instruction would not be allowed (Rocamora, 2020). Moreover, the agency pushed for a flexible learning arrangement that focuses on design and delivery of programs, courses, and learning interventions needed to address learners’ unique needs in terms of pace, place, process, and products of learning (Cervantes, 2020). These flexible learning arrangements needed new learning management systems, capacity-building or training of faculty members, and repositories for flexible learning resources. The shift to flexible learning delivery was needed in spite of issues with remote or online learning like differences in access to various remote modalities of learning due to differences in socioeconomic status among students (Simbulan, 2020).