By Eleanore C. Sanchez
The education sector is emerging as a solid market for a Philippine based e-Learning company.
Yapster e-Learning Inc. chief operating officer Bill Spindloe said in a telephone interview yesterday that the corporate market in general has reduced spending on training. He said this is part of cost-cutting measures adopted by companies to cope with the economic slump.
"But we have found that it is viable to focus on schools because education is their business", he observed.
In addition, Mr. Spindloe explained that schools are now more receptive to the concept of using the computer as a teaching tool.
"Prior to last year, schools seemed to be watching and waiting to see what would happen with computers. But once the bigger colleges here started adopting e-learning, most of the other schools have started to follow suit. Now it seems we are seeing a snowball effect", he added.
Furthermore, he noted that tapping companies that have expertise in e-learning seems to be a more cost-effective alternative for schools that want to adopt information technology (IT).
Instead of building their systems from the ground up, he said most of the company's client schools opted to use off-the-shelf solutions even for administrative tasks such as registration.
"It's also more cost effective for them because they already have existing curricula, their courses are already available. All they need is to integrate it with the e-learning format. So, getting someone who already has the system and can adapt the content to the system seems simpler than going into applications development", he said.
Meanwhile, he stressed that schools in the Philippines are focused on integrating technology into the classroom, instead of making their program suit the application.
He added that the main benefit of using technology enabled teaching tools is the enhancement of the teachers' ability to assess the students' level of understanding.
"We have a module that allows teachers to know how well each student understood the lesson. We do this by letting students do their homework on the module, then it assesses comprehension", he said.
With such information, he said teachers can adjust her schedule accordingly and ensure that all students understand the lesson before she moves on to the next one.
Yapster e-Learning currently has 25 Metro Manila partner schools. Mr. Spindloe said that the company plans to expand outside the Metro and into other Luzon provinces such as Bulacan, Batangas, and Baguio this year.
Its partner schools include La Consolacion College, Lyceum and Assumption College.