The Department of Education (DepEd) said it is preparing to strengthen the capacity of the DepEd Commons to assist more learners and teachers in distance learning in time for the opening of classes in August.
DepEd undersecretary for administration Alain Del B. Pascua said the agency is upgrading the platform to double the numbers of learners that can access the Deped Commons 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.
The DepEd is in the process of 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 revealed 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 in the country.
“When we started last March 17, which was while the fourth grading period was ongoing during the pandemic, the DepEd Commons didn’t crash. 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 said.
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.
The platform can be accessed free of data charges by all mobile subscribers of Globe, TM, Smart, Sun, and TNT.
