By MERLINA HERNANDO-MALIPOT
Officials of the Department of Education (DepEd) admitted that the learning materials produced for students under various delivery learning modalities in distance and blended learning “may not be 100 percent perfect” to date, thus, the public is welcomed to spot errors so the agency can make the necessary corrections.
Barely a week after classes in public schools formally started, DepEd has been receiving reports of “errors” in its learning materials, including the Self-Learning Modules (SLMs) and educational episodes shown over DepEd TV.
Photos of modules laced with errors are currently making their rounds online. However, DepEd Undersecretary for Curriculum and Instruction Diosdado San Antonio said that it is very important to “verify first” if these modules are produced by the agency before making generalizations.
Screenshots showing an incorrect solution to a Math problem broadcasted on national television last Tuesday, Oct. 6, also became viral, something DepEd Undersecretary for Administration Alain Pascua has already apologized for.
Pascua, in a virtual briefing Thursday, made clarifications on the incident and explained the DepEd TV workflow. He noted that with thousands of videos being targeted for production, an error or two would be inevitable.
“This is not even the last time that there will be errors,” Pascua said. “There will always be errors, I assure you, because we are not perfect,” he added.
Television based instruction is among the options under the distance and blended learning implemented this year. Pascua said that the episodes that DepEd has produced aim to complement the SLMs which is considered the “backbone” of distance learning.
Pascua acknowledges that there might be other errors in other TV episodes given the short amount of time to produce these coupled with limited manpower.
“The production team, with less than 200 workers, was tasked to create around 130 to 220 episodes per week in just a short amount of time,” Pascua said. To be able to produce “perfect” episodes, he noted that the team might need “more time.”
Pascua noted that in less than six months, DepEd was able to produce over 200 episodes in a week, train teacher-broadcasters, among others. “There are over 40 steps in the production of a DepEd TV episode, which included quality assurance from subject-matter experts,” he added.
San Antonio explained that “not all” of SLMs distributed to students this year went through quality assurance.
He noted since the Basic Education-Learning Continuity Plan (BE-LCP) can be contextualized by the regions, some SLMs might contain errors.
“Not all self-learning modules underwent quality assurance in the Central Office and even if these were checked by us, there might still be some errors,” he said in a radio interview.
Aside from SLMs, San Antonio said that the modules produced by the regions as well as other materials aligned and mapped with the Most Essential Learning Competencies (MELCs) can be used by students.
While DepEd is trying its best to screen all the learning materials, San Antonio said that there might still be errors that will be left unchecked.
San Antonio and Pascua welcomed the public – especially those who are willing to volunteer – to spot errors and inform the agency about it for appropriate action.
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