Two teachers, one from Quezon City and another from Tarlac, expressed their gratitude to the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) for a courseware that they deem very helpful in their teaching profession.

Meanwhile, another from Camarines Norte sent this message via the courseware’s Facebook page: “Your courseware project will be very helpful to my nieces and nephew.”

What courseware are they talking about?

The DOST’s Advanced Science and Technology Institute (ASTI) has been developing Mathematics and Science courseware modules for elementary and high school students and teachers since 2006 with the support of the Science Education Institute (SEI), also of DOST.

This Courseware Project (http://courseware.dost.gov.ph/) aims to make math learning more accessible to students and help math teachers find ways to teach the subject in a more effective way. In so doing, the courseware serves to upgrade and improve science and math education in the country by enabling schools to take advantage of Information Technology (IT) in conducting streamlined classroom lectures in a cost-effective way. As a result, students become more competitive.

“The coursewares make full use of information technology to aid our classrooms and teachers in enriching the students’ learning environment in science and mathematics,” said DOStSeretary Mario G. Montejo. “These tools are developed by Filipinos for Filipinos, hence teachers no longer have to use foreign materials. The platform used in the coursewares is very appropriate for today’s students whose interest are into computers and information technology.”

The science and mathematics courseware modules are provided for free to public schools and are also made available as online resources.

For this end, ASTI created a website in 2014 primarily to have a venue where Filipinos can download the modules for free. All the completed modules have been compiled and the relevant ones uploaded to the DOST Courseware website. These modules have already been reviewed and tested through the collaboration of ASTI, SEI, and UP’s National Institute of Science and Mathematics Education by conducting user-acceptance tests in several schools nationwide.

The website also archives project-related newsarticles andhouses a photo gallery of students and teachers using the courseware in their schools. Based on statistics from the backend side of the DOST Courseware website, more than 15,000 downloads have already been registered as of this writing.

The courseware developers from ASTI also tapped social media to raise awareness and promote the courseware website. In less than a month, the DOST Courseware Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/Courseware.DOST/), already had 300 Facebook likes. The majority of the site’s visitors are teachers, students, and parents, some of whom have expressed their satisfaction over the courseware and how it helped them do their jobs better as science and math teachers.