Is this a foreshadowing of distance learning in the new academic year?
Students took to Twitter to complain about the difficulties they experienced with the Polytechnic University of the Philippines’ (PUP) Student Information System (SIS) on the first day of enrolment causing PUP SIS to trend in the country.
According to PUP’s website, Aug. 7 was the first day of online enrolment. Specifically, incoming second-year undergraduate students were meant to enroll sometime between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. It seems, however, that the majority of students who tried to enroll, were met with a “Service Unavailable” webpage or the announcement that “something went wrong.”
On April 29, PUP announced that they were looking into Flexible Technology-Enhanced Learning (FlexTel) for the upcoming school year, maximizing different platforms, not limited to online mechanisms. Nonetheless, for some students, the SIS malfunction did not inspire confidence in the online classes they are expecting to take.
"Online enrollment pa lang ng PUP epic fail na," writes Twitter user Ted Pylon. "Good luck sa online classes."
Meanwhile, blogger Rod Magaru seemed to refer to the students complaining as “privileged,” suggesting that physically falling in line “from the ground floor to the fifth floor just to enroll” was much more frustrating that the PUP SIS crash.
“The enrollment process is very frustrating and the portal is really hard to access, maybe because of the volume of the students that are accessing it,” says Mark Darenz Menor, an incoming second year accountancy student at PUP. “What annoys me the most is the part where I answered a survey about our capacity for online learning because when you try to submit the survey, it will take you to the start of the survey, and you have no choice but to answer it again and again.”
While Mark shares that some of his blockmates were able to eventually enroll, he was not.
“I am confident that PUP will be able to provide continuous learning for its students,” replies Mark when asked whether he still has confidence in his school’s ability to provide online classes in the upcoming school year. “But many students are still not ready financially and mentally for this new type of learning, and many programs are not really fit for online learning. I believe that education should be inclusive, and no student should be left behind.”
As of writing, PUP has not commented on the SIS malfunction.