A data scientist, a psychometrician, and a college professor were the top 3 grantees of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST)-Coursera Scholarship Grant.
DOST Secretary Fortunato dela Peña bared this during his weekly report on Friday.
He said James Colongan, Jr., data scientist, and entrepreneur, ranked first after completing 932 courses and 165 specializations in Information Technology, Artificial Intelligence, Advanced Machine Learning, Python Data Products, Advanced Data Science.
Colongan, an electrical engineering graduate, is currently developing his startup in General Santos City, the DOST top official cited.
Securing the second spot was Ivy C. Leonardo, a psychometrician from Negros Occidental.
She completed 808 courses and 140 specializations which include Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, Health Informatics, Health Information Literacy for Data Analytics.
At the third spot was Cherry I. Tabada, a college professor at Caraga State University who completed 524 courses and guided projects.
"Top-performing DOST-Coursera grantees were recognized and given certificates for completing 25 to more than 200 courses under the program,” Dela Peña said.
A virtual awarding ceremony was held on January 20.
"Filipino online learners pursued lessons and blew up the number of completed courses from 13,729 in September 2020 to 134,489 to date,” Dela Peña noted.
During the Top-Performer Grantees Awarding Ceremony, Engr. Noel M. Ajoc disclosed that the enrolled courses passed two million with more than one million learning hours spent on the platform.
"Grantees from Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao were able to enjoy free online courses with certificates from different universities and organizations such as Yale University, Johns Hopkins University, Google, and IBM where more than half of the grantees are employees,” Dela Peña said.
"Other learners are students, unemployed learners, and part-time workers.”
The DOST-Coursera grant started in April last year
It was DOST Caraga that applied for the Coursera for Government Workforce Recovery Program and was approved on April 27, 2020.
Coursera gave DOST-Caraga a total of 75,000 slots to "help the government upskill or reskill workers who are actively seeking jobs, under-employed. and those who will lose their job due to the pandemic.”
Dela Peña reported that as of January 2021, around 25,708 learners enrolled to improve their ‘Business Communication Skills’ in several universities and companies around the world.
"Given the industry benchmark, data shows a dramatic increase in learners’ performance from June 2020 to January 2021 based on test scores. From 60 percent, scholars hit an average score of 100 percent reaching the industry average based on Coursera’s benchmark,” he said.
He noted that the Philippines ranked 5th in the Coursera’s Index in Learner Growth with a 107 percent increase from September 2019 to September 2020 based on the Coursera Impact Report last year.