ISRRT_COVID-19_book

learning is initiated. Some students may even spearhead group online discussions with their
peers or groupmates or conduct tutorials among their respective class groups or peers.
Though it seems online learning promotes independent learning, the learning environment
would not be effective if internet connectivity is impaired. Other issues may arise when the
medium to which the online instruction delivery is too dependent on internet connectivity
available. A moral code in the academe – academic integrity, must be upheld. Everyone is
always expected to be honest, fair, and truthful in every endeavor in building the necessary
skills and competencies, and be reflected in the daily operations and transactions. Academic
integrity issue also arises in the online setup since much of the information needed by the
students to learn can be almost searchable over the internet.
Common infractions committed include plagiarism and other forms of academic fraud.
Despite the known issues, there are safeguards that we implement to avoid a breach in the
academic integrity of the examinations, and other outputs the students are expected to
deliver. First of which, we subject the student output to plagiarism scanning applications; we
ask them for proper citations and referencing; and as an institutional mandate, we ask them
to always adhere to our University Code of Honor so that they observe the core value of
integrity in everything that they do.
In conclusion, our educators have acknowledged the values and challenges of the flexible,
distant, online mode of instruction delivery, may it be as an alternative for emergencies or
long-term implementation. This will help so that they may appropriately plan, organize, and
direct the administration of instruction to the learning needs of students, considering the
demands and challenges unveiled. Being proactive and creative are the qualities and skills
that we need to master, for us to think of programs, services, and processes to efficiently
deliver the quality education that the students deserve, even amidst a global crisis. While we
expect the worst scenarios to come and disrupt our current practices, we need to still
continuously plan for the best possible solutions to help our students achieve the learning
outcomes in the most appropriate means during prevailing situations – whether there are
exceptional (during the pandemic) or in more normal times. There are pieces of literature to
search for as a reference in extracting the most applicable approach to our context, and a lot
of learning from our experiences. These come, both from educators’ and students’
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