‘DepEd Commons’ online platform can accommodate more users by August

To assist more learners and teachers in distance learning in time for the opening of classes in August, the Department of Education (DepEd) is beefing up its preparation to strengthen the capacity of its online learning platform.

DepEd Undersecretary for Administration Alain Pascua shared that the department is upgrading its online platform called the “DepEd Commons” in order to double the number of learners that can access the site simultaneously.

“We have about 8.4 million unique users in DepEd Commons at this time. We would want to reach out all of the 17 million, or even more than the 17 million learners that we have including the teachers,” Pascua said.

To achieve this, Pascua explained that the DepEd is in the process of integrity testing the platform to accommodate more users by August since online will be one of the alternative delivery modalities to be implemented. Other modalities will be modular and TV and radio-based instruction.

Pascua also explained that the DepEd Commons - despite having multiple users who are simultaneously logging in to the platform - has been “durable” especially during the early parts of the pandemic.

“When we started last March 17, which was while the fourth grading period was ongoing during the pandemic, the DepEd Commons didn’t crash,” Pascua said in Filipino. “This means that the platform is stable. Even when we used what we call the ‘learning management system’ for the webinars wherein there were more than 45,000 participants, the DepEd Commons remained stable and didn’t encounter any problems,” he added.

The DepEd Commons is an online educational platform created by the department for public and private school teachers and learners which supports distance learning, and was being developed even before COVID-19 pandemic hit the country.

In cooperation with the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) and National Telecommunications Commission (NTC), https://commons.deped.gov.ph/ can be accessed free of data charges by all mobile subscribers of Globe, TM, Smart, Sun, and TNT. Users are encouraged to give their feedback about the platform by visiting https://commons.deped.gov.ph/feedbacks/new