WELCOME MESSAGE Chancellor Grace Alfonso UP Student Summit in UPOU UP Open University 1 December 2012 [Greetings] First of all,

I would like to welcome everyone to the UPOU Headquarters in Los Banos, Laguna. For many of you, I understand that this is the first time youve been here and actually see the beautiful backdrop of our HQ the legendary Mount Makiling. As many of you know, the UP Open University was established in 1995 to provide quality higher education especially to areas where there are no UP campuses. UPOU exists for that government employee in a far-flung municipality who refuses to succumb to the perils of intellectual isolation. UPOU is for that mother who hopes to improve her qualifications as she strives to combine both career and family commitments. UPOU is for the Overseas Filipino Worker who equips himself for a new career to realize his dream of one day returning to his family and country. And recently, UPOU is also for that young undergraduate student who embraces the power of technology for learning. As we can see, UPOU means differently to a diverse range of people. Through the years, UPOU has established its reputation as the leading institution of distance learning in the country and one of the centers of innovation in online learning in the region. This has not come easy for us. Open and distance learning is relatively a new mode of teaching and learning in the country. Many of our colleagues in UP have initially expressed their reservations about distance education. Our structures and systems are different from what most academics are accustomed to. Our students also had to adjust to technology-mediated forms of communication. The general public has had a lot of misconceptions about open and distance learning. Over time, UPOU began to carve its own niche in the field of higher education, catering mostly to working professionals. As our graduates have attested, distance education has given them the freedom to gain new knowledge and skills while pursuing their careers and other commitments. By interacting with co-learners all over the country and the world, they were able to expand their perspectives and be exposed to other peoples narratives. Open and distance e-Learning (or ODeL) is not just a mode of education. As a worldview Open and distance e-Learning, maintains that the affordances and features of distance education need to be infused with values that underpin the universitas ethos excellence, academic freedom, humanism, intellectual pluralism, democracy, and service to society. Together, all these elements are embedded and facilitated by networked technologies and knowledge communities strengthened by the communities of practice. Open and distance e-learning is

therefore a community of digitally connected scholars engaged in academic discourses for social transformation and in ways that are critical, reflective and collegial. UPOUs accomplishments and its future can be attributed to a dedicated networked community of students, faculty, affiliate faculty, REPS and admin staff who believe in open and distance elearning. You the students are the most important element in this system. As an open university, we have strived to make our course delivery systems as flexible as possible to suit your own contexts. While far from perfect, a student support system was established to facilitate your administrative concerns as students. To be able to actively participate in this ODeL community, students need to organize themselves and make representations of their needs to the rest of the University. We fully understand this and we express our full support to this initiative. In fact, the online community group upoucommunity.net was created years ago to help students facilitate their collective discussions and actions. The UPOU is unique in the UP System. It is also a unique open learning institution. In the UP System, we are the only constituent university that is primarily mandated to deliver distance education courses. In the region, we are the only open university that offers our courses 100% online. In the world, we are the only open university that is part of a National University. Our students come from over 60 locations in over 40 countries. For some, this might be a challenge in organizing. But for me, it offers an opportunity for UPOU students to be creative and think out of the box. I have always believed that UPOU students are far more resourceful that their counterparts in conventional schools. It takes a lot of initiative, imagination, and courage to consider UPOU, let alone study and complete your courses here. The road ahead may not be as straightforward as your chosen academic path. But I am hopeful that with patience, cooperation, creativity, and respect for diversity, you can come up with a student council that addresses the pressing needs and suits the values and lifestyles of a diverse and dispersed student population. As UPOU students, you are aware of the value of ICT in education. Use this technology imaginatively and responsibly for the benefit of the students you will be representing, the University as a whole, and the larger community. Once you have institutionalized yourselves, create your own values and rituals. In our online classes, I have noticed that we have already created our own small patterns of talk how we greet each other, ask questions, and express our disagreement and agreements. As an ODeL community, we need to elevate this on a larger scale. The organization that you will be creating will play a large role in forging these rituals, these virtual communities of practice that will socialize our learners not just as UPOU students, or members of the UP community, but also as Iskolar ng Bayan.

These are indeed exciting times for Open and Distance e-Learning. Not only are our pedagogies evolving but also our organizations, and more importantly our cultures. To our students here and online, heres to engaging and fruitful discussions ahead of you. Mabuhay ang mga mag-aaral ng UPOU. Mabuhay ang UP Open University. Mabuhay ang Unibersidad ng Pilipinas. Mabuhay tayong lahat! Maraming salamat po at magandang araw sa inyong lahat.