By Mikee Piscos
CATBALOGAN CITY – “Adaptability to change is itself a hallmark of successful education,” Dr. Felisa E. Gomba, Vice President for Academic Affairs, shared the words of Peter Hilton to Samar State University’s academic personnel as she started her talk, “Adopting Syllabus for Flexible Learning Modality: Recrafting Syllabus via collaboration and partnership” during the second day of the University-Wide Annual Faculty Development Training on Tuesday, August 3, 2021.
Dr. Gomba highlighted the skills to be incorporated in the syllabus and are needed to produce Future Proof Graduates such as cognitive flexibility, digital literacy and computational thinking, judgement and decision-making using data analytics, emotional and social intelligence, creative and innovative mindset, interpersonal communication skills, leadership skills, diversity and cultural intelligence.
“The world of work is evolving quickly which means as a Higher Education Institution, SSU has to figure out how to prepare (students) for future job’s role that is impossible to predict,” she said.
Hierarchy of challenges that arise in flexible learning changed in the context of the crisis caused by the pandemic like personal challenges, limited social interaction, technology difficulties, assessment issues, and concerns on learning materials and methods.
“By providing students with the liberty to teach themselves and experiment with various learning methods, the students become more accountable with the way they are digesting information because the responsibility shifts onto them,” she pointed out.
Parallel/breakout sessions by field or discipline followed after her talk as faculty recraft their respective syllabus.