FOLLOWING A full year of online learning, Vice President for the Loyola Schools Maria Luz Vilches, PhD announced in May that AY 2021-2022 will use a semestral calendar. According to Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Josefina Hofileña, the feedback received from the Loyola Schools (LS) community was the reason for reverting to a semestral schedule.

The Vice President’s Council came to the decision after feedback revealed that the previous quarterly schedule led to several challenges for both students and teaching personnel.

In addition to the growing mental health concerns among students, the University administration also considered the recurring feedback that the quarterly schedule left insufficient time for accomplishing academic workload and little “elbow room.”

Despite the mixed opinions regarding the two systems, the administration ultimately decided on a semestral schedule because it would seemingly benefit the LS community more compared to the quarterly setup.

Weighing the pros and cons

Hofileña explained that the administration had always intended to evaluate the feedback from both students and faculty to determine the next academic year’s system. While most of the data was collected from the surveys initiated by the Sanggunian throughout the academic year, the administration also considered comments on Facebook group Loyola Schools Online Learning Community.

According to her, the feedback revealed that some LS community members favored the quarterly schedule because they felt that the 48 to 60 learning hours and fast-paced nature of the classes were fitting for the online setup.

On the other hand, Associate Dean for the Core Curriculum Benjamin Tolosa Jr, PhD, said the quarterly setup became an administrative problem since it created a mixed schedule. While the core classes followed a schedule template, Tolosa said some major classes remained semestral.

Furthermore, Tolosa mentioned that the quarterly system became a challenge for the students who experienced having professors that gave heavy requirements to compensate for the shortened learning hours.

“Rather than contributing to wellness, which was also the original goal, there were cases where [the quarterly schedule] increased stress or pressure because students had to submit requirements. There were two major requirements needed for each quarter and there was a shorter period of time to do it,” he said.

With these benefits and complications in mind, the administration kept the modified learning hours for the semestral schedule and limited synchronous sessions to at least one per week.

Addressed student concerns

Due to the time constraints and stress caused by the quarter schedule, the school representatives also expressed the positive implications of a semestral schedule for their constituents.

School of Science and Engineering (SOSE) Representative Rika Cruz mentioned that students under SOSE courses would benefit from a semestral schedule by giving them more time to focus and develop the needed skills for their respective fields.

Similarly, School of Social Sciences Representative Ivan Nabong also said that a semestral schedule would help students be able to better retain information for future classes.

“How can you learn those heavy subjects within that short period of five to six weeks? And you’re going to be expected to retain that throughout college since it’s a prerequisite for other subjects in the coming semesters,” Nabong said.

School of Humanities Representative Patrick Capili and John Gokongwei School of Management Representative Liezel Brito further mentioned how students in their third or fourth year also preferred a semestral schedule because of their thesis classes.

Importance of communication

Despite the advantages brought about by a semestral schedule, the school representatives said that the online learning setup can still face other challenges that affect students’ learning such as inclement weather. However, they encourage students to approach them and answer constituency checks so their concerns may be raised to the administration.

According to them, constituency checks help them address concerns more effectively since they have better knowledge of what challenges and difficulties students may have.

In line with this, Hofileña also encourages students to answer the Course and Faculty Evaluations after the end of each semester.

“The evaluation is really [for] course and faculty, so you’re evaluating not just the faculty but also the course. Things like this: Delivery, questions about licensure exams, questions about number of hours, those kinds of things can be brought up in the course and faculty evaluation,” she said.

Additionally, Tolosa also hopes that members of the LS community will be more mindful of what other people are doing and be more considerate of each other’s workload.

“The focus should really be learning, at the same time integration and collaboration. […] It might help if people are talking to one another, especially given the amount of requirements and when they’re due.”