Filipino online learners have completed more than 147, 800 courses in 10 months under the Department of Science and Technology (DOST)-Coursera Scholarship Grant.
DOST Secretary Fortunato “Boy” T. de la Peña reported that "since the DOST and Coursera learning program started in April 2020, Filipino online learners pursued lessons and completed a total of 146,837 courses through the platform until Feb. 15, 2021."
It was DOST Caraga that applied for the Coursera for Government Workforce Recovery Program and was approved on April 27, 2020.
“DOST-Caraga and Coursera provided 75,000 learning accounts with free access to thousands of courses from top universities and organizations in the world under the Coursera Workforce Government program,” de la Peña said.
Coursera is a massive open online courses (MOOCs) platform offering access to quality education and skills training without the expense of a traditional college or university.
Learners were able to enjoy free online courses with certificates from different schools and organizations such as Yale University, Johns Hopkins University, Stanford University , University of Michigan, Imperial College of London, Google, and IBM.
“The 75,000 Filipino scholarship grantees all over the country and even from abroad spent more than 1.3 million learning hours in the platform during the program period,” de la Peña said.
He noted that National Capital Region (NCR) recorded the most number of learners which comprise around 31.4 percent of the total, followed by Region IV-A (Calabarzon) with 20.9 percent, and Region III (Central Luzon) at 9 percent.
In terms of age, more than half of the grantees or 59.7 percent are aged 20 to 29 years old and 22.7 percent are 30 to 39 years old.
“Around 52.5 percent of the learners are employed with more than half of them coming from private sectors. Many of the learners are working for the government, some are unemployed by the time of registration, or working part-time or freelance,” the DOST chief said.
He said more than 2,000 learners attained intermediate to advanced skill level in data analytics, while almost half of the grantees completed business-related courses.
Scholars were also keen on language learning, health, information technology, computer science, and data science, he added.
"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,” de la Peña said.
With this, he cited 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.
Engr. Noel M. Ajoc of DOST-Caraga said "online learning can be used to leapfrog our skills in the fourth Industrial revolution."