MANILA (Mindanao Examiner / July 5, 2014) – The University of the Philippines Open University (UPOU) said it has officially launched the e-Service Management Program (e-SMP) in partnership with the IT and Business Process Association of the Philippines (IBPAP) and the Asian Institute of Management (AIM).
It said e-SMP is an industry designed program that aims to address the skills shortage in high growth service industries primarily in the IT-BPM sector.
The program which is being developed to scale up both teaching and student learning, is based on the CHED approved curriculum composed of five courses (BPM 101, BPM 102, Service Culture, Business Communications and Systems Thinking), an industry/academe assessment tool and an intensive internship component.
UPOU said it will offer the first two courses – BPM 101 and Business Communications – beginning this school year as Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), meaning that they will be delivered online and for free which makes them open to anyone interested to enroll. The target is to train 900 teachers and 3,000 students by November 2015. It said registration will start immediately.
The e-SMP is expected to produce a critical mass of teachers and trainers in higher education institutions nationwide who will in turn produce quality graduates that meet the global skills standards and high employment demand that is required by the fast growing IT-BPM sector.
“From 2004 to 2009, employment in the IT-BPM sector grew by 34.5% annually and reached 900,000 in 2013. The Philippines is currently the global leader in voice-related outsourced work and is now expanding its higher-value and more complex services including software development, finance and accounting, engineering and health information management. The industry is projected to generate 1.3 million jobs by 2016,” Jomari Mercado, IBPAP President and CEO, said in a statement sent by UPOU to the regional newspaper Mindanao Examiner.
UPOU Chancellor Dr. Grace Javier Alfonso said: “This project is in line with UPOU’s desire to help the private sector through open and distance e-learning. Offering the courses as MOOCs provides the much-needed scalability to produce the number of qualified individuals required by the BPM industry and also supports the university’s advocacy for openness in education.”
The development of the SMP Online is one of the key outputs of the Strengthening Knowledge-Based Economic and Social Development Project, a 26-month technical assistance/grant from the Asian Development Bank (ADB).
The Department of Finance is the executing agency with IBPAP, AIM and UPOU as the implementing partners. The goal of the project is to provide greater access to knowledge resources for teaching and learning IT-BPM courses, enhance higher education curriculum and instruction, and strengthen partnerships between industries and academic institutions to sustain the efforts.
“Interested learners may sign up for these courses at http://model.upou.edu.ph and for other inquiries, they can email toesmp@upou.edu.ph,” Alfonso said.
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