Utilizing e-learning for integrative learning:

A value innovation at St Paul University Philippines (SPUP)

Giged Tong-Battung
St Paul University
Tuguegarao City, the Philippines

In school year 2011-2012, SPUP took the strategic direction of adopting integrative learning in
response to the development of the 21st century required competencies of the industry. It is a
fact that when students graduate, the world of work requires them to collaborate and work with
people of various disciplines. Their abilities to work in a team and integrate interrelated concepts
to the work environment are necessary in the 21st century workplace. This paper presents SPUPs
experience in utilizing eLearning as a tool to achieve integrative learning where there is a
simultaneous pursuit of differentiation, low cost processes and synergy resulting to value
creation for the students and the university. It discusses how value innovation is achieved when
the whole elearning system of utility, price and cost are aligned to achieve integrative curriculum
delivery. It describes how SPUP cost-effectively utilized elearning to achieve collaboration and
synergy among different interrelated disciplines during the design, development and delivery of
its programs. The research used descriptive case method.

Introduction
Globalization brings down the barriers to trade and exchange of services among nations to
encourage free flow of transactions. It has provided wider playing fields for graduates who seek
upward mobility and career path but at the same time has created threats as there are more
players competing in the vast arena. The era of globalization demands for a more integrated
work force that is able to collaborate amidst diversity; connect theories and principles in
various settings and find the interrelationships among various disciplines. The global market
opens enormous opportunities for one who is able to integrate himself in a highly complex,
changing and challenging environment but at the same time creates disadvantage to one who is
not flexible and ready enough.

The business industry has accelerated so fast with globalization and internet technology as
drivers of change. It has to shift from rigidity to flexibility, from being isolated to
interdependencies; from hierarchy flow to matrixes to jumpstart innovations. The ability of
people to collaborate, link and connect build synergy for greater productivity.

Education institutions to be relevant, have to face the challenges of developing human resources
competent enough for them to succeed in an increasingly complex system of the 21st century
world of work . Schools like any business enterprise must seek to be customer focus to achieve
competitive sustainable advantage. The industry which is the end-consumer of the educational
system has become very dynamic and innovative, thus, schools must redefine its teaching
strategies and design learning environment to match the industrys needs. The trends and
practices in the world of work serve as the drivers of innovation in educational institutions. When
the students realize the value of the innovative practices of the school and willing to a price
higher than its cost because of utility this is a value innovation.
St. Paul University Philippines(SPUP) is a private university owned and managed by the sisters of
St. Paul of Chartres in the Philippines It has operated in the Northern Luzon, Philippines for 107
years. Anchored on its mission to uplift the quality of life of its students through innovative
management practices, it has sought and introduced various relevant innovative practices to
develop best product , total customers solutions and value innovation. To keep pace with the
demands of globalization, SPUP formulated its strategic directions to include the redesigning of
Paulinian Education to meet the needs of the 21st century learners by providing a caring
environment and empowering, engaging and exciting possibilities; and to adopt a dynamic and
enriched curriculum that is project or problem and research-based drawing from real-world
situations through multi-disciplinary approach and innovative strategies promotive of authentic
learning. Further, it aims on making the University as a hub of innovation in the Region 2.

In school year 2011-2012, SPUP ventured on adopting Dynamic Instructional Plan(DIP) to replace
its Teaching Guide. The term DIP was coined to emphasize on the adoption of integrative
learning, creative and innovative strategies that develop the 21st century competency
requirements in the industry and lead students to be more self-directed in their learning.

According to the Center for Teaching Excellence in the University of Waterloo, providing students
with the means to integrate their learning can be a challenge for university educators. Promoting
an integrative learning approach, however, can assist students in putting the pieces of the
university experience into a coherent whole that prepares them for their personal, professional,
and civic life.

A review of the curricula and course contents were done at SPUP to identify areas for integration.
Series of workshops were conducted on how to implement the integrative learning approach. An
analysis on the actual world of work let the academic community realized that the personnel
works on projects with people from various disciplines and the ability to collaborate and progress
together are key factors to succeed in the job. To support the integration process, the academic
community instituted a Wednesday free day class schedule for the students and teachers so
integrative learning could be done on this day. A learning street was also set up on campus to
provide an open area for the students to work together on their integrated project.

After a year of implementing the integrative learning approach, very few casesof integration
processes were made at SPUP (Pizarro,2013). The researcher also attempted to adopt integration
of students from various business disciplines in her subject Business Plan Writing. Since all the
graduating business students have research subjects, there is potential for them to collaborate
such that each team could compose of an entrepreneurship, marketing, management,
accountancy and finance students and an English major who would check and edit the
composition and grammar of the sentences in the business plan. This set up is more meaningful
rather than the traditional group which consisted of students from the same discipline because
multi-disciplinary team members can share their strengths and expertise in the group and learn
more from one another thereby producing a more quality output. Moreover, there is greater
potential for the utilization of the research output because the business plan could be
implemented by the entrepreneurship students in the course Business Implementation.
The researcher had experienced difficulty to implement the integration due to the lack of
common free time among faculty members and students involved in the interdisciplinary or
multidisciplinary groupings. Two of the faculty members involved in the integration process were
part-time teachers and were employed full-time in the business industry. This made the
integration process least feasible because even with the free slot on Wednesdays, they could not
be available. The Universitys Wednesday free slot for integration was found to be not fully
effective for integrative learning activities based on the results of the study of Pizarro(2013). The
faculty realized that one day in a week would not be sufficient time for integrative learning.

Conflict of schedule arose as different teachers would schedule meetings for integration involving
the same students. The Learning Street was not also viewed to be a good place to meet for
integration process since Tuguegarao City where SPUP is located is the hottest city in the
Philippines. The hot climate made the students prefer to stay indoor rather than outdoor.
In this paper, the researcher explored the possibility of utilizing elearning to support the adoption
of integrative learning approach as a virtual place for integration.

The Electronic Dynamic Instructional System(eDIS) which is the Learning Management

System(LMS) of the University using the Moodle had been utilized in the University since the
school year 2011-2012 in the distance and blended learning modes but it had not been used as a
tool for integrative learning. The researcher documented the processes she undertook and the
best practices she developed from the use of elearning to support and enable integrative learning
process using descriptive case study.

Yin (1994) shared that descriptive case study is an appropriate measure to employ when the
researcher is working on documentation of experiences. It is the hope of the researcher to utilize
elearning as a value innovation for integrative learning ensuring that the whole system of utility,
price and cost are aligned.

Data Analysis and Discussion

A survey among 47 full-time faculty members of SPUP showed that all faculty members agreed
to a very great extent that integrative learning is a good strategy to develop integrated graduates
equip with 21st century competencies. It also revealed that 96% of the faculty were interested
to adopt integrative learning approach in their classes. 85% were wanting to be part of the
horizontal integration through multidisciplinary integration while 80% like to be involved in
horizontal integration of different courses or subjects with the same students. 75% were
interested to participate in horizontal integration of the same subjects with different classes. 32
wanted to be part of vertical integration where the output of the students in the previous subject
or course is utilized as input for a current course or subject. The least type of integration they
wanted to get involve in was in the vertical integration of classes in a higher year level with a
lower level with only 11 respondents Of the 47 faculty-respondents , only 19 or 40% were able
to adopt integrative learning. These faculty assessed their implementation only at limited extent
at 25% to 50% of their subjects. Seven of them did multidisciplinary integration, 11 did integrative
learning of different subjects with the same class while the highest frequency was on the
integration of same subject of different classes. Only 3 of the faculty of who did the integrative
approach used computer application in the process. The top three difficulties were on finding the
common time to integrate among students and teachers for collaborative work; monitoring and
tracking the progress of the students who come from different classes; and the lack of space or
room where integration process can be done.

Although all the faculty-respondents expressed that they wanted to adopt the integrative
learning approach, 60% did not implement it because of the following reasons: they could not
figure out how to start the integrative process; they had difficulty in looking for common time
among the students to integrate; and they felt difficulty among faculty members to find time to
talk and develop common activities in the module; and they get worried on how to track the
contributions of each student in the development of output.

The researcher explored on utilizing the Electronic Dynamic Instructional System(EDIS)of the
University to perform integrative learning in the tertiary levels. EDIS used Moodle 2.7 as the
Learning Management System(LMS) of SPUP. In the first semester of 2012-2013, she
experimented 2 preliminary cases of integrative learning. While in school year 2013 to 2014, she
did 4 cases of integrative learning which were the subjects of this case study. The facilities and
features of the moodle version 2.7 were explored to support integrative learning.

<TABLE 1 here>

For each of the cases, the researcher created Course Module under the course category
Integrative Learning on the EDIS where all the students and faculty from different classes who
were involved in the integrative learning were given accounts and 24/7 access. They could also
access the modules anywhere as long as there was internet connection. The researcher gave
tutorial sessions to the faculty as they were not familiar with the use of the EDIS. They were also
given orientation on the nature of Integrative Learning Approach. Each faculty member
participated in the development of the activities in the module through accessing the EDIS online.
There was constant communication among faculty members through the personal messaging
feature of the eDIS during the integrative learning process . The researcher acted as mentors to
the faculty members involved.

On the first week of classes, the students were given orientation on how to use the EDIS and the
nature of the integrative learning. The students were encouraged to send messages to their
teachers whenever they have queries on the EDIS. The first part of the Module consisted of
activities to deepen the acquaintance among their team mates and teachers. The student as well
as the teacher must choose a picture to post online to represent best his characteristics. He has
to explain the relationship of the picture to himself. Each member of the team is required to react
on the posting of their team mates and affirm them for their sharing. The first part of the module
also includes the personal information database of the students including their contact details.
The module has an online handbook where the dos and donts are spelled out. The handbook
contains the rubrics how the students would be graded per activity. Each student needed to read
the handbook and shared his insights on what he read before he could proceed to the next
activity. Each student and teacher would have to provide a profile picture. There was also a
glossary where the teachers and students could post the terms they wish to define to ensure that
terms were defined in their context.

In Cases 1 and 2, each team was given a chat room, forum and wiki tools for every integrative
learning activity. Each group was given a choice on how they would communicate with one
another. They could either or both use their chat room or create a forum for their brainstorming.
They could post on the announcement board and agree on the schedule for their chat sessions.
If they did not have common free time to chat they could use the forum to react on the postings
of their team mates when they would be available. Both chat and discussion forum were
monitored by the teachers. They also interacted with the students in both facilities. The students
would share their researches on related topics being discussed through the uploading of files and
adding of links for their team mates . The wiki became the common notepad of the team in doing
their collaborative research. This is where every member contributed to the generation of
output. The wiki was viewed and edited any time by the members of the team. The wiki adopts
the same methodology of that of the wikipedia where the articles could be edited by any willing
contributors. Each teacher and student viewed the output of the team and tracked each
contribution from the history log where different versions made with the file were recorded. The
teacher monitored easily the progress made by the students and could give an objective grade
for every participant based on their contribution to the collaborative project. The teacher also
did timely corrections of the errors of the work of the students in the wiki as correction made
could be seen by the students as soon as the teacher edited the wiki. Other than these, the
moodle has an electronic log to track all the activities of the students. With these features of the
moodle tools, the use of elearning provided solutions to the problems and difficulties the SPUP
teachers that they have expressed in the survey.

In Case 2, the students only produced one output for two subjects or courses. These allowed
the students to cut down its costs and time for project preparation. With this, the students
strived to produce a more quality output as revealed in the survey. In Case 3, the Accountancy
fourth year students enrolled in System Analysis and Design uploaded the programs they have
developed in the Course Module of the EDIS. These could be accessed by the fifth year
Accountancy students for them to be able to have a hands on experience in Auditing a real
program in the subject Auditing in CIS Environment. Each fourth year is partner with a fifth
year. The fifth year students then would post their audit observations and findings for the
fourth year to consider in the improvement of their program. During the finals, the fifth year
BSA students would be ready for integrative learning experience with the BSIT students where
they will audit the system developed in the capstone project of the BSIT. The audit findings
would serve as inputs for the BSIT to improve their project before their capstone defense. In
this way, both groups could benefit from the integration process.

In case 4, the output of the students in their previous subject in Assurance Services Part I was
utilized by the students in Assurance Services Part 2. The output in the previous subject could
be utilized as input in another subject so the students could view the relationships of the
different subjects they are enrolled in. This kind of integration could benefit the students and
teachers as they could assess their progress in their skills and competencies. The Accountancy
students were able to review the Audit Plan they did when they were in the lower years and
identified its weaknesses now that they have higher level of competencies. With the ability of
the Learning Management System to document the accomplishments and outputs of the
students, these could serve as opportunity for portfolio assessment of the teachers of their
students.

In all the cases, the students and teachers accessed the eDIS 24/7 both inside and outside the
university. The university has two internet laboratories with open access for the students who
used eDIS. 80% of the students have cell phones with internet access and 38% have internet
connection at home. Paid wifi connection is also available on campus. Teachers can also avail of
ipad loan from the University to support the use of eDIS. An online surveys on the students who
participated in the case study were made through the eDIS where the respondents were given
anonymous status for them to be objective in their responses.

Table 2. Features the respondents like in the EDIS that made integrative learning possible

Conclusions
In all four cases, the researcher succeeded in the integrative learning process. eLearning is an
enabler of integrative learning approach and when it is used creatively results to value innovation
because the students were able to understand better the interrelationships of various disciplines
affecting them and work collaboratively with less difficulty and ease of convenience. The features
in the LMS of Moodle 2.7 facilitated the implementation of integrative learning approach
providing total solutions to the problems of limited common time and space to implement
integration process. The tracking, monitoring and checking of output of the participants can be
conveniently done in the wiki, online log report and all other tools in the LMS. Both horizontal
and vertical integrations of courses including portfolio assessment can be meaningfully done
through the LMS. Since Moodle is an open source system, the cost incurred for the integrative
learning process is less compared to setting up of a physical classrooms where integration
activities could be done. The elearning platform which is the eDIS when used as medium for
integrative learning is very much valued by both the students and faculty who participated in the
4 cases in this research. Other than these, the modules developed in the eDIS can be repeatedly
utilized for the next school years allowing the University to accelerate its return on investment.
The implementation of the integrative learning using elearning was found to be of low cost but
high in terms of customers value thereby producing value innovation for SPUP.