July 2, 2020 — The Department of Education (DepEd) is deep in its preparation 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.

During the Handa’ng Isip, Handa Bukas Online Press Conference on Wednesday, DepEd Undersecretary for Administration Alain Del B. Pascua bared that the Department 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,” Usec. Pascua said.

In order to achieve this, he added that the Department is in the process of integrity 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.

Usec. 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 no’ng March 17, at sa kasagsagan no’ng fourth grading period na ginawa natin with the pandemic, hindi bumagsak ang DepEd Commons. So, ibig sabihin, matibay ‘yong ating platform. Even when we used what we call the ‘learning management system’ sa mga webinars natin na more than 45,000 ‘yong mga participants natin, hindi pa rin bumagsak or hindi rin nagkaroon ng problema or aberya ‘yong ating DepEd Commons,” he said.

(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.

In cooperation with the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) and National Telecommunications Commission (NTC), https://commons.deped.gov.ph/ can be accessed free of data charges by all mobile subscribers of Globe, TM, Smart, Sun, and TNT.

For feedback about the platform, you may visit https://commons.deped.gov.ph/feedbacks/new

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