No going back to traditional classes, says CHED

By Lesly Guevarra

College students can no longer return to traditional face-to-face classes as the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) adopts a policy to continue flexible learning in the coming school years.

“From now on, flexible learning will be the norm. There is no going back to the traditional full-packed face-to-face classrooms,” CHED chairman Prospero De Vera III said during a webinar entitled ‘Educating our Children in the New Normal’ on May 21, “the commission has adopted the policy that flexible learning will continue in the school year 2021 and thereafter.”

“If we go back to the traditional face-to-face classroom, we run the risk of exposing our stakeholders to the same risks if another pandemic comes in,” De Vera continued.

He also added that physical classes also “would have wasted all the investments in technology, in teacher training, in the retrofitting of our facilities.”

De Vera said that the old paradigm of face-to-face versus online will now disappear.

“What will happen is a flexible system where universities will mix-and-match flexible learning methods appropriate to their situation,” he explained.

"The more prepared universities will continue investing and moving ahead using online platforms,” De Vera said, “others will be allowing some of their students to come back at specific periods and do more synchronous versus asynchronous learning."

To educate students in this new normal, De Vera said that there should be openness on the part of the faculty members and administrators to be flexible in the way they manage the educational system.

He also said that faculty members must “realize that the first problem of adjusting to doing online now requires them to rethink the way they handle classes, the way they give assignments, and the way they determine how the class is managed.”

“We realize that the digital divide exacerbates difficulties in adjusting to flexible learning,” said De Vera.

Despite this, he believes that students and teachers are able to adjust to flexible learning.

“We are seeing in the experience of higher education institutions that innovation and adjustments are emerging – meaning, both students and faculty members are able to adjust to flexible learning better now than before,” he added.