Jump-starting learning communities in the Philippines using available online tools: educational outcomes and student feedback

This paper describes the pioneering trials in using widely available and accessible online tools to build a course-based learning community in a higher education institution in the Philippines. A quasi-experiment was devised using two intact groups to determine cognitive learning outcomes for an online course on Ecological Product Design, and focus group discussions and survey questionnaires gathered student feedback on their online experiences. The study found that the achievement scores of the online and face-to-face students during both the pre-test and post-test examinations were not significantly different. In general, the online participants appreciated the convenience, flexibility, appropriate pace, and increased freedom and self-responsibility that the "new way to learn" afforded in their off-campus learning communities. In the end, this project was able to demonstrate that the online tools of information technology can be ingenuously harnessed to allow peers to study and work together in spite of separation and relatively simple resources.