PHILIPPINES—“Going Mobile: Making e-Learning for Agriculture & Fisheries More Accessible”, a project of the Agricultural Training Institute (ATI), is one of the three nominees for best national digital solution from the Philippines for the World Summit Awards (WSA) 2018.
The project aims to offer e-Learning courses through mobile learning or m-Learning. This is so that the course content can become more adaptive to smart devices, thus, making it more accessible to the learners.
e-Learning is a component of the ATI’s e-Extension Program for Agriculture and Fisheries. Since December 2007, e-Learning has been serving as ATI’s platform to offer alternative means of acquiring new knowledge and skills on agriculture and fisheries.
Within 10 years of operations, e-Learning has garnered around 60,000 registered users and produced 39,000 graduates from 58 rolling courses being offered. The online learners are extension workers, students, farmers, farming enthusiasts, overseas Filipino workers, among others.
With thousands of graduates produced, the ATI has generated around USD4,900 worth of savings based on the assumption of costs incurred if the conventional means of face-to-face training was conducted instead.
In 2016, the ATI started offering e-Learning courses that can be accessed through tablets and mobile devices. Now, six courses are available for download and offline browsing, namely, Good Agricultural Practices for Vegetable Production, Adlay Production and Product Development, Sweet Potato Production, Food Safety, Product Costing, and Climate Change.
The WSA 2018 nominees show the richness, diversity, and innovation of digital solutions on a global scale and prove how digital technology can improve society on each corner of the world. The WSA 2018 nominees will be evaluated based on seven fundamental criteria: content, functionality, design, technology, innovation, impact and global value.
Each year, WSA nominees are selected by the WSA National Experts from more than 180 United Nations member states. The WSA National Experts nominate up to eight projects for each country— one for every WSA category.
The ATI is the only government institution among the three Philippine nominees and the only Filipino project nominated under the ‘Environment & Green Energy’ category.
Five projects will be selected in each of the eight categories. The 40 WSA winners will be invited to present their innovation at the WSA Global Congress. The winning projects will be announced in November 2019. Visit https://www.worldsummitawards.org/2018/09/28/wsa-nominees-2018/ for the list of nominees.